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Seovaniens sey 


APR? 1925) 











CHEED 
MARRIAGES 


By MARY E. RICHMOND, Author of 

Social Diagnosis, and What Is Social Case 

Work?; and FREDS. HALL, Joint Author 
of American Marriage Laws 





NEW YORK 
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 


1925 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY 
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 


WM. F. FELL CO*- PRINTERS 
PHILADELPHIA 


ore 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Chapter I 
INTRODUCTION 


Chapter II 
THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


. Physiological Aspects 

. Climatic and Geographical Aspects 
IIT. 
. Social Aspects 

. What the Minimum Marriageable Age 


Racial Aspects 


Should Be 
Chapter III 
MARRIED CHILDREN 


. The Size of the Problem 

. Some Characteristic Features of the Problem 
BBE 
. The Conflict with Child Welfare Laws 


Exceptions in Pregnancy Cases 


Chapter IV 
PARENTAL CONSENT 


. Parental Control of Marriage in the Past 
. Parental Consent and Child Marriages 


y 


PAGE 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


IIIf. The Present Situation 
IV. Proposed Substitutes for Parental Consent 
V. Marriage Annulment 


Chapter V 
PROOF OF AGE 


I. Kinds of Proof Now Required 
IT. Kinds of Proof Available 


Chapter VI 
NEXT STEPS 


I. Ten Concrete Suggestions 


INDEX 


PAGE 
102 


109 
113 


117 
120 
128 


138 
4 


149 


Bish OF) VABEES 


PAGE 

. Percentage of Girls Married in Four 
Climatic Zones of the United States........ 31 

. Brides under 20 Years in Proportion 

to Total Brides in Italy in 1914, by 
OT ACEMION LSet cries apeiron eee aon 33 

. Youthful Marriages by Sections of the 
RCGUNITV. ANIC (DVVOLOCK ene a) wii reek eae ahs 36 

. Marriage Licenses Illegally Issued in 
Pilea4aG (CASS StUGIEt ie eo ev cine eats te 72 

5. Marriage Licenses Issued to Girls Re- 

corded as 17, 18, and 19 Years of Age 
Het ICENSE, OUICOSa ity sac at ool a bee eee os 104 


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In 2022 with funding from 
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https://archive.org/details/childmarriagesbyOOrich 


CHAPTER | 
INTRODUCTION 


ACTS are stubborn things. When the 

atmosphere of a subject becomes charged 

with a mixture of personal prejudice and 
generous emotion, the facts that relate to it 
still keep their shape, refusing to adapt them- 
selves to facile generalization. It happens that 
marriage is one of those subjects concerning 
which nearly everyone has views while few 
have facts. Often the alleged facts produced 
in popular discussions about marriage prove to 
be Nitle more than statistics and sensational 
details about divorce. In spite of the close re- 
lation between divorce and marriage, many 
aspects of the latter have no relation whatever 
to the former. It would seem necessary, there- 
fore, in any attempt to get the facts of mar- 
riage in their true perspective, to effect a tem- 
porary separation between these two topics. 
There are reasons for this separation which will 
appeal to the research student only, but a prac- 
tical reason that should make a much wider 
appeal is the fact that there are elements in our 

9 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


nation which cannot be united upon the sub- 
ject of divorce, but which might work together 
heartily for the reform of our present marriage 
procedures. 

Our own attention was first attracted to the 
subject of marriage administration in the 
course of case committee work in a family wel- 
fare society—the Charity Organization So- 
ciety of New York. Many instances of mari- 
tal maladjustment came to our notice there. 
While by no means all of these troubles were 
due to causes which we could identify, and | 
while not a few that could be so identified 
seemed beyond any skill then available, it was 
clear that a considerable number could be 
traced to ill-devised and indifferently admin- 
istered marriage laws. 

Here, then, was a subject that had received 
scant attention and one that could be studied 
objectively. Accordingly, we began by pre- 
paring and printing a digest of American mar- 
riage laws.t. These state laws showed wide 
diversity, some of it necessary in so vast a 
country with very dissimilar social conditions. 
But we have come to believe that a greater de- 

1 Hall and Brooke: American Marriage Laws in their Social 


Aspects—a Digest. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1919. 
IO 


INTRODUCTION 


gree of uniformity and of social welfare could 
and should be achieved by reforms effected, first 
of all, locality by locality and state by state. 
From the beginning, the good administra- 
tion of laws already in existence has seemed to 
us evermore important than the enactment of 
new measures, so that the publication of the 
Digest was followed almost immediately by a 
series of field studies for the purpose of seeing 
how the state transacted its part in the office 
of marriage. These studies extended over sev- . 
eral years and included visits to 90 cities in 28 
states. A body of first-hand material was 
gathered by this method.! This has since been 
supplemented by a study of the statistics of 
the subject, by research in libraries, and by an 
extended correspondence. The whole is now 
being analyzed and condensed into a book on 
the administrative side of the state’s relation 
to marriage. When completed it will be but a 
beginning in a new field of study, and will need 
to be supplemented by many state-wide and 
local surveys. The field is all uncultivated as 
yet; no one has put a plow into it, though 
many social reforms already effected should 
1 In 83 of the cities and towns visited Alice M. Hill was responsible 


for the interviewing. 
Il 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


make its cultivation easier.1 Our own inquiry 
should nevertheless provide some kind of fact 
basis on such subtopics as the marriage license 
system and its origin; the good practices dis- 
covered in marriage license offices that should 
be more widely adopted; the present exploita- 
tion of marriage as shown, for example, in mar- 
riage market towns or what used to be known 
as Gretna Greens;? the characteristics of hasty 
and clandestine marriages; the relation of civil 
and religious celebrants of marriage to the 
whole problem, and so on. 

Our findings on youthful and child mar- 
riages, though closely related to these other 
parts of the study, were found to constitute a 
discussion nearly complete in itself. After 
some hesitation we have been persuaded, 

1 We are not unmindful of the studies already made of marriage 
legislation, more especially of the recommendations of the Commis- 
sioners on Uniform State Laws and of Howard’s monumental History 
of Matrimonial Institutions, to both of which we are indebted. But 
so far as we have been able to discover no organized group has made 
any systematic attempt to improve the administration of marriage 


laws in the United States, and no detailed study of their administra- 
tion has ever been undertaken. 


* Gretna Green was a notorious village in Scotland just north of 
the English border to which runaway couples from England resorted. 
There are in the United States today a number of such marriage 
market towns where out-of-town marriages are licensed and solemn- 
ized with unusual expedition. 


I2 


INTRODUCTION 


therefore, to print these few chapters in ad- 
vance of their inclusion in the finished whole. 
This is done in order that members of leagues 
of women voters, of children’s code commis- 
sions, family welfare societies, ministerial asso- 
clations, and other bodies interested in the 
subject may make immediate use of our facts. 
It should be noted, however, that these facts 
concern the general public also, and parents, 
we believe, more than any other one section of 
the public. 

Just because facts are stubborn and tend to 
lower the emotional temperature, they may 
also serve to clear the air. Our subject is full 
of pathos and one capable of arousing strong 
public indignation. If we seem, in these pages, 


_ to have treated it in a wholly unemotional way, 


we are far from being indifferent. We have 
faith, rather, in the appeal of the facts and are 
willing to let them make their own argument. 


Anyone who has fought a practical reform 
through to a finish will have become familiar 
with the stock objection that the given meas- 
ure is only a part of alarger question. As there 
are few undertakings either remedial or pre- 
ventive of which this criticism cannot be made, 

13 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


it is often irrelevant. Good public administra- 
tion, of course, is neither the beginning nor the 
end of marriage reform. Good inheritance, 
good early training, wise educational measures, 
all play an important part in making marriage 
a more viable thing, and none of these can be 
neglected. But many people get a portion of 
their education from the state and its repre- 
sentatives. Our public servants exert no small 
degree of influence over the ideals and acts of a 
great body of citizens. When, therefore, we 
encounter the view that it is foolish to waste 
time upon laws and their administration in a 
department of human life in which instinct is 
in control, it may be well to examine this con- 
tention in some detail. 

It is true that the institution of marriage is 
partly based upon an instinct as strong as are 
the instincts of self-preservation and of pug- 
nacity. But that instinct and these other two 
have been controlled and reshaped not only by 
the material environment, but by a great body 
of social tradition which is transmitted, with 
many modifications and substitutions, from 
generation to generation. This molding world- 
force, which Carr-Saunders and Hobhouse be- 
fore him have characterized by the one word 

14 


INTRODUCTION 


“tradition”? and Graham Wallas by the term 
“social heritage,” is at once the source of civi- 
lization and its chief means of development. 
Tradition is neither heredity nor environment 
in the restricted use of these words, though we 
inherit it in the sense that we are born into it, 
and this inheritance becomes more completely 
a part of us and of our environment than any 
merely physical conditions ever can. The 
way in which social heritage molds successive 
generations will be illustrated later in our 
discussion of the relation of parental consent 
to marriage. It is evident that, historically 
considered, parental authority over marriage 
has been exercised through all possible stages 
of tryanny and self-interest, though with no 
small admixture, as the parental relation 
developed, of affection and salted-down wis- 
dom. If anyone still thinks that the biological 
instinct of sex has had its own uninterrupted 
way in the world, let him read Westermarck’s 
History of Human Marriage in the rewritten 
edition, more especially the two chapters on 
“Frequency of Marriage and Marriage Age”’ 
and “‘Consent as a Condition of Marriage.’ 


1 Westermarck, Edward: The History of Human Marriage, fifth 
edition, rewritten. London, Macmillan and Company, 1921. 


15 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


The interesting fact about social tradition is 
not only that it is cumulative, but that it is 
capable of transformation at a rate of change 
now rapid, now slow, but never more rapid 
than in our own time. In this respect, tradi- 
tion or social heritage closely resembles cus- 
tom, which is its first cousin, and habit, which 
is its cousin once removed. “Social habits,” 
says Westermarck, “have a strong tendency 
to become true customs, that is, rules of con- 
duct in addition to their being habits.’ 

The social process by which custom is most 
successfully changed is known as substitution. 
A simple illustration of substitution is the fol- 
lowing: Social workers stationed years ago ina 
city which had a well-developed factory sys- 
tem but no compulsory education law or child 
labor law in city or state, found that the Ger- 
man-American portion of the population had 
the long-established custom of taking their 
children out of school and setting them to work 
as soon as they had been confirmed. Formerly 
their work had been in the household, but 

1 For a development of this subject of social heritage from different 
angles, see The Population Problem, by Carr-Saunders, p. 437 ff.; 
Our Social Heritage, by Graham Wallas; and Social Change, by 
W. F. Ogburn. In this last volume will be found an interesting dis- 


cussion of the process of substitution. 


i0 


INTRODUCTION 


when factory doors swung open invitingly, the 
old connection between “confirmation” and 
“work”’ was carried over without the pressure 
of economic necessity in the family, for the 
German-Americans were a thrifty group of 
people. The children ‘‘made their first com- 
munion”’ at or below the early age of 12, and 
into the factory they went. The solution of 
this social difficulty was found with the aid of 
a compulsory education law which required 
the child to remain in school until a certain age 
or grade had been achieved. Here we have 
the substitution of further schooling for paid 
work—one custom for another. 

Marriage law administrative reform will 
have to seek similar solutions today. Law 
alone in the child labor field and here also is of 
little effect without a series of careful adjust- 
ments and adaptations, social as well as ad- 
ministrative. The latter, in so far as they 
relate to youthful marriages, are indicated in 
the chapters that follow. 

Wherever the unit of administration 1s rela- 
tively small and the population fairly homo- 
geneous, we find the substitution of one group 
of customs for another accomplished with the 
minimum of friction and failure; but even ina 

2 17 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


city the size of New York, with a population 
of such varying traditions and backgrounds, 
we have seen both compulsory education and © 
the prohibition of child labor accepted within 
a generation through the operation of state 
laws and state inspection. It should be noted 
that this acceptance was aided by the close 
co-operation of groups especially interested in 
child welfare. The “replacement aspect of 
custom,’ to borrow a phrase from Professor 
Ogburn, had been demonstrated so many times 
in the last two decades of social endeavor that 
it became the starting point of field studies 
herein described. 

At the time that our digest of marriage laws 
was published the recommendations of the 
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws with 
regard to laws regulating marriage had been 
allowed to get out of print. A further illustra- 
tion of public apathy in this matter is the fact 
that, in 14 of our states, it is still possible for 
girls to marry at an earlier age than that at 
which they are permitted to become wage- 
earners. The subject of the marriageable age 
of girls has remained an inactive issue in these 
states, while their educational and child wel- 
fare agencies have kept the age of leaving 

18 


INTRODUCTION 


school and of entering industry a burning one. 
In the matter of child marriage no group, 
either in these states or elsewhere, has yet 
given serious attention to the social effect of 
existing laws and to their necessary daily 
adaptation in the license offices. How much 
longer will this state of things be permitted to 
continuer 


CHAPTER II 
THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


ANY persons with whom, in the course 
of this study, the subject of the mini- 
mum marriageable age! was discussed 

were shocked to learn that the legal minimum 
is still 14 years for boys and 12 for girls in 14 
of our states; that at and above these early 
ages any minor can now have the consent of 
the state to marry provided only that his or 
her parents have consented.? In effect, the 
states in question shift to parents the responsi- 
bility of decision for all ages above these min- 
ima and below 18 or 21, though, as will appear 
later, little pains is taken by state representa- 
tives to see that parental consent is given for 
all who are of the parental consent ages. 

This whole subject not only of child mar- 


1 For the sense in which we have been obliged to use the term 
“minimum marriageable age”’ see footnote, page 54. 


* These states are Kentucky, Louisiana, and Virginia, where the 
minimum ages referred to are fixed by statute; Florida, Maine, Penn- 
sylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, where they are fixed by 
judicial decisions under common law; and Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, 
Mississippi, New Jersey, and New York, where it has been presumed 
that the common law applies. 


20 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


riage but of youthful marriage proves to be far 
more complicated and urgent than we had 
realized before our field studies were under- 
taken. As used in these pages the term 
“youthful marriage’”’ applies to the marriage 
of a boy of 19 or under or a girl of 17 or under, 
while the term “child marriage”’ is adopted in 
order further to characterize those youthful 
marriages which are contracted at the age of 
15 or earlier by girls and 17 or earlier by boys. 

Very youthful marriage is much more fre- — 
quent among girls than among boys, so our 
discussions and statistics will be related for the 
most part in these chapters to the marriage of 
girls. In analyzing the 1920 census figures, we 
shall have to make the group of “married fe- 
males 15 to 19 years of age inclusive,” our us- 
ual standard of measurement, but for other 
purposes we shall follow the age classifications 
just named. 

There have been times in the world’s history 
when youthful marriage, more especially of 
girls, has been universal, and there are parts of 
the globe today where it would be exceptional 


1We have used “youthful marriages” instead of “early mar- 
riages”’ in this connection because “‘early”’ is so often used in contra- 
distinction to “late.” “Early” marriages after maturity—in the 
early twenties, that is—are altogether desirable. 
21 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


to find an unmarried female child over the age 
of puberty. A high-class Hindu, for example, 
would feel it a disgrace to be the father of such 
achild. “‘Ona strict rendering of certain texts 
her unmarried state entails retrospective dam- 
nation on three generations of ancestors.”! To 
trace the steps by which Western civilization 
has moved away from this tradition is beyond 
the scope of the present small volume. But 
we have found in our field visits wide gaps be- 
tween the intent of the laws relating to youth- 
ful marriage and their actual administrative 
results, and have found some legislators, some 
administrators, and some clergymen who are 
still convinced that any girl arrived at the age 
of puberty is ready for marriage. We cannot 
take for granted, therefore, that child mar- 
riages are wholly a thing of the past. Before 
proceeding to a discussion of present-day con- 
ditions as we have found them, together with 
proposals for their betterment, it seems neces- 
sary to examine as briefly as possible the more 
theoretical side of this subject. What avail- 
able evidence is there on the physical effects of 
child marriager What influences have de- 
termined the marriageable age, and what bear- 


1 Westermarck, Vol. I, p. 379. 
22 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


ing have the answers to these two questions 
upon the state’s responsibility for child mar- 
riage? The institution of marriage is so much 
older than law that law must move cautiously 
with respect to it. The ideal minimum age 
indicated by science may be so far removed 
from the actual minimum still recognized by 
certain groups that progress toward the ideal 
will have to be made gradually. 

The physiological evidence is not absolutely 
conclusive, though it all points one way; but 
the question has also its climatic and geograph- 
ical aspects; race enters in; and there are in- 
volved, above all, those many phases of tradi- 
tion, of custom, and of the prevailing culture 
that have already been referred to. These 
last three items may be grouped together under 
the single term “‘social.’”’ What may we con- 
clude from an examination of these different 
points of viewr What exceptions, adaptations, 
administrative safeguards would seem, in the 
light of our present limited knowledge, to be 
necessary in order to make the laws that regu- 
late marriageable age more effectiver It is 
recognized, of course, that the individual 
standards of American parents are often better 
than those that can be embodied in any stat- 

23 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


ute, but even for these very parents a wise law 
wisely administered may prove a great aid in 
some unforeseeable emergency. 


I. PHYSIOLOGIGAETASPEGIS 


Marriage and cohabitation even before the 
age of puberty are not uncommon in certain 
East Indian provinces and among many Afri- 
can tribes.1 “‘Exactly what influence early 
intercourse has upon the generative organs 
and their functions,’’ says Carr-Saunders, “‘is 
not clear. It is known, however, that early 
intercourse is injurious to the general health, 
and it is not difficult to understand in a general 
way how, if this is so, the reproductive func- 
tions would be adversely affected.’”? 

As to the children of very young mothers, 
they appear to have less chance of living be- 
yond infancy than do those whose mothers are 
older. According to a study made in Balti- 
more in 1915 by the United States Children’s 
Bureau, the children of resident parents usu- 
ally showed a higher mortality rate when their 
mothers were under 20 than when they were 


1 Westermarck, Vol. I, p. 380. 


* Carr-Saunders, A. M.: The Population Problem, p. 103 ff. Ox- 
ford, Clarendon Press, 1922. 


24 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


between 20 and 25. This was true in the case 
of both native and foreign-born white mothers, 
though not of Negroes, and true not only of 
first-born children but of those born subse- 
quently. 

In reply to a question from us as to the ages 
between which child-bearing is of greatest 
physiological advantage to mother and child, 
Dr. Walter B. Cannon, Professor of Physiology 
at Harvard University, states that, in the ab- 
sence of adequate research, he knows of no 
conclusive scientific answer to our question, 
though many opinions have been expressed. 
He adds, however, that, in general terms, the 
biologist knows that marriage should not pre- 
cede the completion of the period of rapid 
growth, since such growth makes heavy de- 
mands upon the organism. Beyond the age of 
puberty child-bearing is possible, but it 1s not, 
biologically speaking, advantageous until the 
bodily frame has had time to store up a reserve 
of vigor not attainable during rapid growth. 

The practical problem, Dr. Cannon explains, 
is to discover between what ages girls in Amer- 


1 Rochester, Anna: Infant Mortality, pp. 137 and 341. Chil- 
dren’s Bureau Publication No. 119, United States Department of 
Labor. Washington, 1923. The figures quoted apply to legitimate 
children only. 


25 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


ica usually achieve this growth, and how long 
a period should elapse thereafter in order that 
they may have a chance to acquire their full 
vigor. He notes one indication of the drain of 
child-bearing upon a mother’s vitality in the 
downward curve of her ability to nurse one 
child when she is carrying another still unborn. 

The largest body of data on the physical de- 
velopment of young people in the United 
States comes to us in the anthropometric 
studies of Professor Bird T. Baldwin of the 
University of Iowa.! From a series of con- 
secutively repeated measurements of the same 
groups of children and from other sources, 
Baldwin has made a beginning which should 
render entirely practicable before very many 
years the substitution of new methods of rat- 
ing for the present chronological standards 
used for school admissions, for the granting of 
working papers, for the issuance of marriage 
licenses to minors, and so on. When data 
representative enough are at hand, our ratings 
can be based upon the physiological and men- 
tal age of the child or young person. For the 


1 Baldwin, Bird T.: The Physical Growth of Children from Birth 
to Maturity. University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, Vol. I, 
No. 1, 1921. 


26 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


present, however, we shall have to continue to 
depend upon chronological age ratings, though 
it will be possible, with Baldwin’s and other 
similar results in mind, to employ greater 
flexibility in their use. 

As might be expected, Baldwin’s data show 
marked individual variations even among 
normally developed children. Some of these 
variations are indicated in the summary of his 
findings which follows: 

Age of Puberty. From data gathered in four 
different sections of the country, it appears 
that the age of puberty varies for individual 
girls from 10 years or earlier to the age of 16 or 
17, and the variation for boys is from 11 to 16 
years of age. The median age of pubescence 
for girls was found to be 13 years and 7 months 
in an Iowa City school, 13 years and 8 months 
in a group studied in Baltimore County, 
Maryland, and 13 years and 9 months in 
schools in both New York and Chicago.” 
Country boys and girls and those from small 
towns are found to develop somewhat earlier 
than do those dwelling in cities.’ 

Variation as Between the Sexes. From the 
ages of 7 to 17 there is a clearly marked differ- 


1 Baldwin, p. 188. 2 Baldwin, p. 190. 3 Baldwin, p. 191 
27 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


ence in rate of physical development in favor 
of girls. At the age of 7, girls reach a stage of 
development considerably in advance of boys, 
and girls continue to lead in succeeding phases 
of growth, so that a 12-year-old girl is as far 
advanced toward final growth as is a 14-year- 
old boy.!' Baldwin cites his measurements of 
10-year-old twins, aboy anda girl. Anatomic- 
ally, Sarah, the girl, is about two years in 
advance of her brother Samuel, and should 
“for the next three years exceed Samuel in all 
measurements except those of the head.’ 

We see in the foregoing statements the basis 
in science for a difference of two years which 
has been established by the common law of 
England and by the practice of most of our 
states between the minimum marriageable age 
for girls and that for boys. 

While the case on the physiological side is 
far from complete, the weight of evidence, in 
so far as we have been able to discover it, is all 
against marriage for either sex at puberty, 
against the marriage of girls under 16, and, on 
the whole, though not so conclusively, against 
marriage for girls under 18 or for boys under 
20. It has not seemed necessary to multiply 


1 Baldwin, p. 164. 2 Baldwin, p. 187. 
28 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


authorities and references at this point, though 
the data bearing upon wide individual varia- 
tions seem to us important. Evidence of these 
wide variations emphasizes anew the need of 
exercising all the intelligent discretion possible 
within the law; and the necessity, moreover, 
of so drafting our marriage laws that discretion 
is not only allowed but expected. In forming 
a conclusion, as the license issuer must, about 
a particular case, averages have their value but 
they also have their dangers. No one should 
“use the method of probabilities if he has an 
opportunity of getting behind it and under- 
standing the causes at work in the special 
Cases: 


Il. CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS 


A country that includes within its boun- 
daries the 25th and 47th parallels must con- 
sider, in addition to the division of this subject 
which is directly physiological, the influence of 
climate upon youthful marriage. Nor, with 
our large and varied foreign population, can 
we ignore racial influences. Physiology and 
race belong to what may be termed the organic 


1 Sidgwick, Alfred: The Application of Logic, p. 69. London, 
Macmillan and Company, IgIo. 


29 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


aspect of our subject; climate and geography 
to the inorganic; while all those varying tradi- 
tions, folkways, institutions religious and secu- 
lar, that shape the life of the individual and 
influence marriage customs may be classified as 
belonging in the superorganicor social division.! 

Generally speaking, the hotter the climate 
the earlier girls mature and the shorter the 
whole period of their maturity. It is neces- 
sary, however, to distinguish between natural 
and artificial climate. Our own heated houses 
and warm clothing, the overheated hut of 
Lapp or Eskimo, account for what appear to 
be exceptions to this rule. Then too, “altitude 
rivals latitude in influence. A low place in the 
north has a mean temperature similar to high 
places farther south. For example, the Indians 
in the plains of Peru mature at 9 and the 
mountain Indians at 14.’ 

Some authorities claim that the United 
States are an exception to this rule, but the 
data on which they base this claim seem very 
inconclusive. In fact, as regards youthful 


1 The use of these three terms to characterize the three divisions is 
Professor W. F. Ogburn’s. 

2 Steinach and Kammerer: ‘‘ Klima und Mannbarkeit,”’ in Archiv 
fiir Entwicklungsmechantk der Organismen, Vol. XLVI, pp. 391-458. 
Berlin, 1920. 


30 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


marriages, a somewhat rough analysis of the 
1920 census returns, by distributing the sev- 
eral states into four zones on the basis of 
normal annual temperature, gives the results 
shown in Table 1. 


TABLE 1.—PERCENTAGE OF GIRLS MARRIED IN FOUR 
CLIMATIC ZONES OF THE UNITED STATES 


Girls 15 to 19 years, native white of native parents only 


Normal annual Per cent 

Zones temperature married 
Coldest 35° to 45° 75 
Less cold 45° to 55° 10.9 
Warmer 55° to 60° 17.6 
Warmest 60° to 75° 17.8 


The foregoing table eliminates the influence 
of race. Of other factors that may have en- 
tered into this result, probably one of the most 
important is the difference in frequency of 
youthful marriages in large cities and in small 
towns and rural districts. In the latter, mar- 
riage at an early age is more frequent. But it 
is possible to eliminate this influence, in a 
measure at least, from our calculations. Thus, 
a comparison of the same data for all cities of 
100,000 population and over (grouped by geo- 
eraphical instead of by isothermal divisions) 

31 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


showed a contrast in the proportion of youth- 
ful marriages similar to that of Table 1. That 
is, youthful marriages are more frequent in 
the large cities of the southern portion of the 
country than in those of the northern portion. 

Indication of this tendency to marry earlier 
in a warm climate than in a cold one appears 
also in the latest marriage statistics issued 
by the Italian government that are unaffected 
by Italy’s participation in the European war. 
In 1914, the proportion of youthful to total 
marriages in each compartment of the king- 
dom, arranged from north to south, was as 
shown in Table 2. 

Climate may be considered strictly as re- 
lated to the temperature and humidity of the 
air, together with the winds and rainfall—to 
the weather, that is—or it may apply also to 
altitude, waterways, and nature of soil, thus 
becoming closely related to the physical geog- 
raphy of a region. In this latter sense the 
Southern Highlands of the United States fur- 
nish a good illustration of the relation between 
climate, geography, and youthful marriage. 
Their altitude, if this were the only factor to be 
considered, would tend to delay marriage. But 
wherever we find natural barriers to intercom- 

32 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


TABLE 2.—BRIDES UNDER 20 YEARS IN PROPORTION TO 
TOTAL BRIDES IN ITALY IN 1914, BY COMPARTMENTS a4 


Brides per 1,000 brides of all ages 


Compartments b Tego years 
Under 15 years ag es Ka 
Piedmont a: 2090.7 
Lombardy 4 250.2 
Venetia es 225.0 
Liguria - 253.7 
Emilia sf 250.4 
Tuscany nA 249.0 
Marches is 268.3 
Umbria = 238.6 
Lazio a 229.3 
Abruzzo and Molise 0.3 325.7 
Sardinia a 231.1 
Campania 0.3 200.1 
Apulia 0.4 325.0 
Basilicata 0.3 402.1 
Calabria Tz 447.0 
Sicily 1:2 413.8 


a Direzione Generale della Statistica e del Lavoro, Movimento 
della Popolazione, nell’ anno 1914, p. xxiv. Roma, 1917. 


b Provinces or compartments having about the same latitude are 
grouped together. 


munication, and towns and villages isolated 

by those barriers, there we are likely to find 

youthful marriages. These are due in large 

part to the difficulty of communication with 
3 33 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


an outside world which has more varied plea- 
sures and occupations, together with greater 
educational resources. The Appalachian chain, 
as it extends through the Virginias, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, and North Carolina, has kept in- 
tact the tradition of an earlier day. There are 
few Negroes in the region, and John C. Camp- 
bell in describing the mountain whites makes 
these statements: 


As a rule marriage comes early in the mountains. A 
girl is a spinster at 18, and on the “cull list” by 20. The 
writer has had pupils leave school at 12 and 13 to marry, 
although this is becoming less common every year. . . 

There is little comfort for the spinster, relegated to 
the hard tasks of life, yet dependent for support upon 
her male and her married woman kindred, all of whom 
are agreed in thinking her a failure. “Then you be n’t 
married,” said the weary mountain mother of many 
children to a teacher from a distant church school, ‘and 
you don’t look like you minded it nuther.’’! 


The following is from a letter written from 
Kentucky in April, 1922: 


A young fellow of 18 who works in the mine is to 
marry K—————,, who is 14. Miss B. has promised 
every girl who waits to be married until she is 18 a wed- 
ding at the Pine Mountain School and a wedding present. 

1 Campbell, John C.: The Southern Highlander and His Home- 
land, pp. 133 and 127. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. 

34 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


Ifi.. RACIAL ASPECTS 


“In spite of our prepossessions to the con- 
trary,’ says Ellsworth Huntington, “‘it is be- 
coming evident that much of what we call 
racial character is really the effect of physical 
environment acting upon generation after 
generation.’ Without accepting in its entirety 
the wide sweep of Huntington’s generaliza- 
tions with regard to the relation between cli- 
mate and race, or between climate and the 
economic, political, and social welfare of man, 
our studies do seem to reveal that the new 
environment of America has had a marked in- 
fluence not only upon the general character of 
the immigrant population but upon the ages 
at which they and their children marry. 

Table 3, following, presents figures from the 
census of 1920 which show that the extent of 
this influence is confined to no group of states 
but, with variations, 1s country wide. 

In our discussion of this table, it will be 
simpler to refer to the first group as ‘‘native 
girls’? (native white of native parents); to the 
second as ‘foreign girls of the second genera- 


1 Huntington, Ellsworth: World Power and Evolution, p. 227. 
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1919. 


35 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


TABLE 3.—YOUTHFUL MARRIAGES BY SECTIONS OF THE 
COUNTRY AND BY STOCK 


Percentage of girls, 15 to 19, married, according to the 1920 census 


Native Native 
white of | white of | Foreign- 


Section All native | foreign born Negroes 
parents | parents | white 
New England 6.2 6.8 4.1 11.0 11.9 
Middle Atlantic 8.0 8.4 5.9 bi, 16.9 
East North Central | 10.1 11.0 6.4 15.0 23.9 
West North Central | 9.7 ri 5.5 13.7 19.4 
Pacific 12.0 12.3 9.0 19.2 17.5 
Mountain 13.8 13.6 10.7 24.4 222 
South Atlantic 16.9 16.3 9.2 175 18.7 
East South Central | 19.6 19.2 7.8 19.0 21.0 
West South Central | 19.0 18.5 13.4 23.6 21.9 
New York City 5.3 5.5 4.0 72 15.3 
Whole country 12.5 i333 6.3 14.3 20.0 


tion’’ (native white of foreign parents); and 
to the third as ‘“‘foreign-born girls’’ (foreign- 
born white). The table shows that foreign- 
born girls marry somewhat younger than na- 
tive girls. For the country as a whole the 
difference is small—14.3 per cent of the former 
being married and 13.3 per cent of the latter!— 

1 A similar contrast is shown for girls 13 and 14 years of age, the 
ratios per 10,000 being 41.5 for foreign-born girls and but 28.3 for 
native girls. Figures for these ages by different geographical divisions 


are not available, and our table is confined, therefore, to the age 
group 15 to Ig years. 


36 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


but in several sections outside of the southern 
states a much wider variation is shown. This 
variation is not surprising, for early marriages 
are common in several countries from which 
our foreign-born girls come, and many of them 
have been in this country too short a time to 
respond to new influences. Some, in fact, may 
even have been married before they came here; 
with others their national traditions tend to 
prevail. But the foreign habit of early mar- 
riage does not persist after the first generation. 
Only 6.3 per cent of the foreign girls of the 
second generation were married as compared 
with 14.3 per cent of the foreign-born girls. 

The outstanding reason for this contrast be- 
tween the two generations is, we believe, the 
absence of effective wage demand for the labor 
of girls of the ages considered on the continent 
of Europe and in Mexico, and the existence of 
that demand in this country. 

Another contrast which Table 3 presents 
is more difficult to explain. The figures indi- 
cate that the custom of youthful marriage 
among foreign-born girls has been so changed 
among foreign girls of the second generation 
that they are actually marrying at a later age 
than native girls. The difference is striking— 

aif 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


13.3 per cent of the native girls between 15 and 
20 are married, but only 6.3 per cent of the 
foreign girls of the second generation.! The 
contrast cannot be explained by the fact that 
native girls live more generally in rural dis- 
tricts, where youthful marriages are common, 
for a similar contrast was found in all but 10 of 
the 66 largest cities in the country. In some 
cities it was small, as in New York, figures for 
which are shown in the table; but in others it 
was large, as in Grand Rapids where the per- 
centages are 9.6 of the native girls and 4.2 of 
the foreign girls of the second generation. 
Thus, even in cities, foreign girls of the second 
generation marry later, as a rule, than do na- 
tive girls. This fact is traceable to the same 
cause that has already been suggested for the 
later marriages of second generation foreign 
girls as compared with foreign-born girls. In 
both cases the contrast would seem to be due 
to their differing response to the wage demand. 

In 1920, 45.2 per cent of these second genera- 
tion foreign girls were gainfully employed, as 
compared with but 25.0 per cent of the native 


1 For girls 13 and 14 years of age a similar difference is shown, the 
ratios per 10,000 being 28.3 for native girls and but 14.8 for foreign 
girls of the second generation. 


38 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


girls.!_ We have consulted a number of persons 
who know our foreign population of the second 
generation. They agree that the existing wage 
demand influences girls of that generation and 
the native girl very unequally because of their 
different social situations. The highly prized 
social recognition which comes to the native 
girl by many avenues seems to most foreigners 
and their children unattainable save through 
one door alone and that the door of profitable 
employment. It is true that, with foreign 
stock, economic necessity is also a factor of 
great importance, but with them the drive of 
necessity and that of opportunity both lead in 
the same direction—away from very youthful 
marriages. Thus, the daughter who in the Old 
Country would have been married at the first 
chance, must now, for a few years at least, de- 
lay marriage—often will wish to do so—in 
order to help in putting her own and her fam- 
ily’s fortunes on a firmer foundation. 

As regards the larger proportion of youthful 
marriages among Negroes shown in our table, 
it is necessary to record the fact that for five 
states—North and South Carolina, Alabama, 


1Census of the United States for 1920. Abstract of Occupation 
Statistics, p. 562. Washington, 1923. 


39 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


Kentucky, and Oklanoma—the difference gen- 
erally found throughout the country did not 
hold. In these states proportionately more 
white girls than Negro girls were shown by the 
census figures tobemarried. Thesame tendency 
apparently was disclosed by figures collected 
by our field worker in three Alabama counties 
and by figures reported by the Alabama State 
Board of Health.1 No attempt is made here to 
explain these contrasting results, but it is not 
believed that most census statistics relating to 
the marital status of Negroes can be used with 
assurance as to their accuracy. Family life 
among Negroes is still less stable than among 
other racial groups. This instability is fully 
explained by the history of the race, and in all 
probability no census returns relating to this 
phase of their lives picture the true situation. 


IVR SOC TARAS RIG is 


When we turn to the superorganic aspects of 
youthful marriage we find ourselves in that 
field of endeavor in which the good adminis- 
tration of existing laws achieves beneficent 
results, and their bad administration greatly 

1 Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Alabama for 
1918, p. 66. 

40 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


delays social progress. But the traditions and 
customs that form so large a part of our social 
life are shaped not only by social experience 
deliberately applied with a view to the modifi- 
cation of these customs. They have been and 
will continue to be shaped by religious beliefs, 
by occupational standards and industrial con- 
ditions, by housing conditions, by the pioneer 
life of a newly settled country, by the exigen- 
cies of war, by the peaceful processes of educa- 
tion and of organized play, and last but not 
least by the conquest of that separateness in 
which many rural families have dwelt. This 
conquest has come about through multiplying 
means of intercommunication—through the 
railroad, the postal service, the telephone and 
telegraph, the newspaper, the automobile, and 
so on; and all of the shaping and reshaping 
process has a closer relation to marriage cus- 
toms than is generally recognized. 

Reference has been made to the Southern 
Highlands, where geographical isolation seems 
to have been the chief factor in perpetuating 
the youthful marriages of an earlier time. It 
should be noted that state boards of education 
and other agencies of public welfare are be- 
ginning to overcome the backwardness of this 

41 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


region. But we find other forms of isolation 
and other barriers quite as effectual, in their 
own way, as are a range of mountains. Thus, 
the descendants of many of the earlier German 
settlers of Pennsylvania (popularly known as 
the Pennsylvania Dutch) have been able in 
the past, though separated from their neigh- 
bors by no geographical barrier, to resist suc- 
cessfully the influence of such characteristic- 
ally American institutions as the public school, 
the ballot, and the newspaper. It was the iso- 
lation of a fixed idea and tradition that kept 
them—still keeps them to a certain extent—a 
peculiar people. Owing, perhaps, to the reli- 
gious persecutions and devastating wars that 
sent them to this country, many of them, more 
especially those of peasant stock, clung tena- 
ciously to their own language, their own cus- 
toms, and their own seventeenth century ideas 
of the relations of the sexes. 

The fact has already been referred to more 
than once that people tend to marry earlier 
in country districts than in cities. This phe- 
nomenon Is largely a social one. In cities, the 
development of manufacture and, as has been 
noted, the introduction of women into wage- 
earning industries, the greater diversity of in- 

42 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


terests, better opportunities for schooling and 
for recreation, combined with the pressure 
of an advancing standard of living, all tend 
to delay marriage. By contrast, agriculture 
favors youthful marriage. Among occupa- 
tional conditions that have delayed marriage 
in the past may be mentioned the old appren- 
ticeship system and the older forms of domestic 
service which are now rapidly disappearing. A 
period of industrial depression immediately 
lowers the marriage rate, but industrial re- 
covery brings a corresponding increase. In 
other days, before the growth of large indus- 
trial communities, the number of marriages 
in Europe was said to vary inversely with the 
price of corn. 

During the European war there were many 
marriages of girls in their teens, though the 
housing shortage in our American cities tended 
at the same time and later to delay marriages 
somewhat. Thus, war and post-war condi- 
tions had a disturbing influence upon marriage 
statistics not wholly overcome at the time the 
census of 1920 was taken. The general effect 
of the war, by hastening marriages that would 
have taken place in any event and by causing 
marriages that might never otherwise have 

43 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


occurred, was to increase to somewhat more 
than their normal proportions the number of 
married girls in the 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 age 
groups of the census. 

It should be noted, however, that the pro- 
portion of those married in these 15-19 and 
20-24 age groups! has increased steadily since 
1890, and that at least a part of the increase 1s 
due to the fact that more of our people of all 
ages are marrying now than then. This is con- 
trary to the popular impression that marriages 
are longer delayed than formerly and that 
more people remain single. It is true that not 
every section of the country shows an increase; 
in some sections there has been a considerable 
decrease. No one explanation can be given of 
the fact that, for the country as a whole, the 
proportion of married to single persons has 
increased. If, however, we may judge by the 
statistics of marriage in good times and bad, 
we should be inclined to name, as one very im- 
portant factor in the increase, the marked ad- 
vance in material prosperity in the United 
States since 1890, and the far wider distribu- 
tion of prosperity at the end of the period than 
at its beginning. 


1 The comparison includes at this point the widowed and divorced 
as well as the married. 


44 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


In certain isolated American communities 
we still find not only very early marriages, but 
sO many intermarriages among the cousins of 
one family strain that sometimes three-fourths 
of the inhabitants of a village have the same 
surname. Increased facilities of communica- 
tion, however, by railroad, automobile, tele- 
phone, telegraph, and newspaper have come to 
mean not only a more varied food supply, 
greater cultural advantages, and a through 
draft of ideas; they also bring about a wider 
choice and, in all probability, a somewhat 
delayed and better choice of mates. 


V. WHAT THE MINIMUM MARRIAGEABLE AGE 
SHOULD BE 


It has been pointed out that in 14 states the 
minimum marriageable age is only 12 for girls. 
In nine states it is 14,” in eight states it 1s 15,° 
in 17 states it is 16,4 and in one state, New 


1 See page 20. 

2 Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Georgia, Iowa, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah. 

3 Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South 
Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin. 

4 Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, 
Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, 
New Mexico, Ohio, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming. 


45 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


Hampshire, it is 18. In discussing these varia- 
tions with different persons we sometimes 
encounter the view that child marriage avoids 
illegitimacy and immorality, and even that it 
supplies a remedy. In other words, we are 
asked to accept the tradition that a child is 
mature enough to marry because it might be- 
come or has become the victim of parental neg- 
lect or of brutal abuse. ‘‘There is much im- 
morality among the foreign population of our 
city,’ reported a social worker. “If they 
could marry younger [than 15] it might be 
eliminated.”’ This would seem to be a naive 
view of the ease with which elimination can be 
effected and wholesome living achieved. By 
affixing the rubber stamp of the state we can- 
not make sound a condition known to be un- 
sound. 

A judge of one of our domestic relations 
courts, taking a more realistic view of what 
constitutes morality, said to our field repre- 
sentative, ‘“There always will be immorality, 
but the marriageable age will have little or no 
effect upon it.’’ Some of the clergymen inter- 
viewed, though only a few, seemed to have 
accepted the theory that the marriageable age 
was simply a question of the age of puberty. 

46 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


“Marriage at an early age,” said one, “‘takes 
care of itself.”” And another announced the 
comfortable conclusion that “‘the good men 
who are our legislators and are fathers of girls 
have looked into this matter and have decided 
that the present minimum age [14 years for 
girls in his state] is best.”” The view of a larger 
number, however, was that of the Protestant 
clergyman who said, “‘Below 18 a girl is too 
immature to marry. She does not know her 
own mind.”’ And two Roman Catholic priests 
expressed themselves vigorously to us on the 
subject: “I preach against marriages under 18 
and talk against them,” said one of them. 
“The girl who marries under that age Is over- 
burdened and, in a few years, worn out. One 
girl, known to me to have married at 15, has 
had two children before the age of 19, and has 
been in the hospital for numerous operations. 
She was married in another parish.” ‘Girls 
are not physically or psychologically ready for 
marriage before 18,” said the second priest, 
“but if the marriageable age is made 18, the 
reasons for the change should be carefully ex- 
plained to the people of the state.” 
Administrative officers have additional rea- 
sons for objecting to these unions. “Children 
47 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


? 


should not be married at 14,” said an atten- 
dance officer. ‘“‘Husband and wife live to- 
gether a few months, possibly there is a child, 
and then they separate.” “If girls did not 
marry until 18,” one license issuer commented, 
“there would probably be fewer marriages of 
young girls to old-‘men.”’ While another one 
observes, ‘““Very youthful marriages cheapen 
the relationship and detract from the solem- 
nity of the association, even when the marriage 
is with the consent of the parents.” 

But one of the most important aspects of 
youthful marriage—one now assuming new 
significance under the growing influence of 
women outside the home as well as their 
increased power within it—has not yet been 
touched upon. We refer to the way in which 
the marriage of girls in their early and middle 
teens perpetuates in fact, whether in theory or 
not, the undemocratic relation of the sexes. 
In such a union the husband is usually older, 
often much older, than his girl bride, and he is 
in charge of her—he becomes the guardian 
and mentor of his wife. The transfer of an 
immature girl from guardianship in the home 
of her birth to continued guardianship in the 
home where, had she entered it later, she 

48 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


might have been one of two equal partners, 
inevitably cripples her personality and that of 
her mate as well. Neither may ever know the 
meaning of genuine comradeship in the mar- 
riage relation. 

We were at pains to inquire of people of ex- 
perience in a number of the cities visited during 
this study what, in their opinion, the minimum 
age should be below which no girl should be 
granted a marriage license either with or with- 
out parental consent. The 113 replies received . 
are here summarized. These opinions came, 
not in response to a questionnaire, but in the 
course of what was usually an extended dis- 
cussion of the many sides of marriage law ad- 
ministration. All of the 113 people whose 
opinions are included in our summary were re- 
sponsible either for some part of the adminis- 
tration of the marriage law in widely separ- 
ated communities in 20 different states, or else 
they were well placed to observe its results. 
The minimum ages suggested were as follows: 


12-year minimum I person 
14-year minimum 5 persons 
15-year minimum td 
16-year minimum AT. eat 
18-year minimum Abbi ee 
Over 18 years Ostet: 
Total Liao 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


The sources of these opinions by geographi- 
cal divisions and by occupations were: 


GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS OccuPATIONS 

New England 8 License issuers 42 
Middle Atlantic 18 Social workers 36 
South Atlantic 6 Judges 14 
East North Central 23 Clergymen 9 
East South Central 18 Unclassified 12 
West North Central 7 — 
West South Central 8 Total 113 
Mountain I 
Pacific 24 

Total 113 


The number of persons who favored lower 
ages than 16 or higher than 18 is comparatively 
small. About a third of those who favored 
either 16 or 18 stated that exceptions should be 
allowed. Of the 113 persons interviewed 101, 
or over 89 per cent, favored ages ranging from 
a minimum of 16 with exceptions up to 21 
without exceptions. In general, about the 
same ages were preferred by license issuers and 
by social workers, while judges, possibly be- 
cause of their experience with divorce and an- 
nulment cases, favored somewhat higher ages. 
Of the 92 license issuers, judges, and social 
workers questioned, 76 favor a higher mini- 
mum than the laws of their various states now 
require. These are the three occupational 

50 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


groups brought most closely in contact with 
young people seeking permission to marry and 
with those seeking the annulment of marriage. 
Only four license issuers, three social workers, 
and two judges favored a minimum age below 
16 years. As already stated, 16 is the mini- 
mum now established by law in 17 states,} 
though, as we are to illustrate later, this par- 
ticular measure 1s administered with a laxness 
in the proof of age required, or an absence of 
proof, which in most of the 17 states reduces 
this minimum considerably. Our investi- 
gators found that the license issuers in mar- 
riage market towns usually favored a low mar- 
riageable minimum, but a third of the license 
issuers expressing an opinion on this point 
favored an absolute minimum of 18 or higher. 

If we may add to this summary our own 
conclusions as to what the minimum marriage- 
able age for girls should be, we are inclined, 
after careful weighing of the evidence, to take 
a rather conservative view for the immediate 
future, believing that any sudden and con- 
siderable advance of the age minimum in the 
various states without preparatory education 
of the community and detailed provisions for 


1 See page 45, footnote. 
51 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


intelligent license issuance, as well as for re- 
view of the evidence in exceptional cases, will 
do little good and perhaps considerable harm. 
With a minimum higher than 16 and possibly 
with that minimum, there should be some pro- 
vision for the exceptional case. It is true that 
the exception clauses in marriage statutes have 
sometimes worked very badly in practice, but 
in the few places in which these clauses of the 
law are well administered they are genuinely 
serviceable. Men and women who care for 
human progress and welfare must realize that 
there is no short-cut solution of the problems of 
marriage. They should cease putting their 
faith in a multiplicity of new laws or in any 
short-cut centralization of the law-making 
power, and should devote a larger share of 
their enthusiasm, energy, and ingenuity to 
making the reasonably good law work. If the 
present minimum age is absurdly low, as in 
some states it is, then advance it gradually and 
at the same time see that the law is enforceable 
and enforced. A minimum of 14 is better than 
one of 12; a minimum of 16 is much better 
than either; but it may be impracticable to 
jump from 12 to 16. The evidence, we feel, 
points to 18 as the minimum toward which our 
52 


THE MARRIAGEABLE AGE 


cultural standards are likely to be advanced 
in time, but few states are ready for this as yet. 

As regards the legal minimum ages in effect 
at present in the different states there is no 
basis on which an entirely satisfactory classi- 
fication can be made. Only 10 states clearly 
fix this minimum by prescribing a minimum 
age for license issuance. Some states fix the 
ages below which marriages may be annulled 
for ‘lack of age,’’ some the ages below which 
persons are forbidden to marry or “‘are incap- 
able of contracting marriage,” some specify 
the ages at which persons “‘may marry” or at 
which they “‘are capable of marrying.” Usu- 
ally it has been held by the courts that mar- 
riages may be annulled if contracted below the 
statutory ages fixed by any of these different 
phrases, or, in states with no statutes on the 
subject, if contracted below the common law 
ages of 14 for boys and 12 for girls. 

Outside of the 10 states in which the law 
definitely fixes a minimum age for license issu- 
ance, the designated officials are obliged to 
assume that they have no right to issue licenses 
to applicants below the ages established as 
justifying annulment of marriage for under- 
age. This is a fair assumption. We have 

a93 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


adopted it here for the reason that we find this 
position quite generally taken by the license 
issuers interviewed or communicated with. In 
New Jersey and New York, however, the view 
was found to be general among license officials 
that the annulment statutes have no relation 
to license issuance. We have been obliged, 
therefore, to regard administration in these 
states as controlled solely by the common law 
marriageable ages of 14 and 12.1 This con- 
fused situation is one indication of the extent to 
which our marriage laws have been neglected. 

The subject is further confused by the com- 
mon use of the phrase “‘age of consent”’ to de- 
scribe the minimum age for legal marriage. 
Unfortunately the same phrase is used to de- 
scribe the age below which a female child is 
presumed to be unable to consent to sexual 
intercourse, and it is also used to indicate the 
age at and above which parental consent for 
marriage is unnecessary. The term, therefore, 
is one which should be avoided in discussing 
legal marriage requirements. 


1 It will be noted from the foregoing that, throughout this chapter 
and elsewhere in this study of administration, we have been obliged 
to use the term “minimum marriageable age” as signifying the mini- 
mum age at which marriage licenses are issued after parental consent 
has been granted, 


54 


CHAPTER RI 
MARRIED CHILDREN 


HIS century has often been misnamed 
"| the century of the child.” In sober 

truth, with a quarter of the full term be- 
hind us, it must be acknowledged that the 
twentieth century is no such thing; certainly 
not when conditions in a country as intelligent 
as the United States still make possible the 
marriage of children—girls of 15, 14, and even 
younger, and of boys 17, 16, 15, and younger. 
Such conditions constitute only a small part 
of the body of evidence against exaggerated 
claims of advance in the matter of child wel- 
fare, but they are a part which has not yet 
been described in any detail. 


i Lhe olZE ORs Ln Es PROBLEM 


Marriage license records can give little idea 
of the number of brides under 16 for the reason 
that ages are so frequently falsified at the 
license office by bride, bridegroom, and parents. 
Their affidavits are accepted in lieu of proof, 
and usually there is no attempt at verifica- 

95 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


tion on the part of the issuer. Even in states 
having no minimum marriage age requirement, 
save the common law rule of 14 for boys and 12 
for girls, we find that parents misrepresent the 
ages of their daughters in an effort to conform 
to the general social standard, or to what they 
have heard that the law requires. When, how- 
ever, the census enumerator arrives to record 
the members of a family, their ages, and their 
status as married or single, there is less reason 
for misrepresentation, and we may assume 
that the count is more likely to be accurate, 
though even the census figures understate the 
size of the problem. Census returns do not 
give age at marriage, but the 1920 census 
shows that 12,834 girls recorded as married 
were 15 years old at the time the census was 
taken, and that 5,554 more were under 15, 
giving a total in that year of 18,388 who were 
still under 16 and had married at 15 or at some 
earlier age. The census also takes note of 825 
female children of 15 or under who were either 
widowed or divorced. We have gathered in 
some detail and shall describe later the records 
of 240 child marriages,! of which a little over 
23 per cent were solemnized (if that is the 


1 Entered into by 250 children, some of whom married each other. 


56 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


right word) when one of the candidates was 
under the age of 14, and in a few cases as young 
ashi: 

As compared with many other census totals 
those just quoted seem small. But it must be 
remembered that each of the child wives of 
1920 has a lifetime before her, and that every 
year during which she lives other child brides 
will enter married life at the age of 15 or less. 
Looking backward, we note that the same 
process has been going on for many years and, 
with the help of the four censuses taken be- 
tween 1890 and 1920 and the aid of actuarial 
life tables, we estimate that approximately 
343,000 women and girls who are living in the 
United States today began their married lives 
as child brides within the last 36 years.!' This 
estimate does not include a good many still 
living who married prior to 1890. 

But each marriage involves in vital ways the 
social welfare of two people instead of one— 


1 The number of married children under 15 years of age is reported 
for all census years since 1890, when marital statistics were first 
collected by the census. The number who were 15 years of age is 
reported separately for 1910 and 1920 and has been estimated for 1890 
and 1900. From these figures an estimate was made of the average 
number of girls 15 and under marrying during each year since 1889-90. 
The number of these still living in 1924—successively larger numbers 
each year—was then calculated from life tables. 


aT, 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


involves their welfare with certainty and may 
involve that of their progeny. Our estimate, 
therefore, should include in round numbers 
324,000 husbands, the number estimated as 
living at the end of the period considered.} 
This gives a grand total of 667,000 persons 
now living in this country whose lives have 
been directly influenced as principals by the 
practice of child marriage. It should be noted 
that the children born to these husbands and 
wives, though their welfare also is undoubtedly 
involved, are not included in this estimate. 
Nor have we included boys married at 17 or 
younger to girls or women older than 15, be- 
cause the number of such marriages is rela- 
tively small. 


I]. SOME CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE 
_ PROBLEM 


With respect to the marriage of girls under 
16 and boys under 18, it seems to us that the 


1 In the latter calculation it is assumed that the average age of the 
husbands of the girls who married under 16 was 23 years at the time 
of the marriage. Statistics published for New York State (exclusive 
of New York City) as of the years 1916, 1917, and 1918 by the state 
department of health show that the average age of men who married 
girls under 15 was 23.3 years, and of those who married girls of 15 
was 22.6 years. 


58 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


outstanding fact is the physical and mental 
immaturity of these children. This fact was 
emphasized in the preceding chapter. It 1s 
unchallenged and in one sense needs no supple- 
menting. Such evidence for and against child 
marriage as may appear from the particular 
instances that we have been able to assemble 
will serve not as further proof, but as a means 
of illustrating certain characteristic relations 
between child marriage and parental control, 
and between both and the issuance of mar- 
riage licenses. Parental control is so impor- 
tant that this aspect of the subject will be dis- 
cussed in a separate chapter. 

It is in the very nature of the marriage rela- 
tion that only a fragmentary account of it is 
possible. The objective things, especially the 
least happy of them, become matters of com- 
mon knowledge and sometimes get into the 
full and careful records now kept by certain 
children’s agencies and family welfare socie- 
ties. We might have attempted to assemble 
a set of summaries in regard to the unhappy 
aspects of child marriage drawn from these 
sources, but they would not have presented a 
representative cross-section of the child mar- 
riages of the country for the reason that these 


59 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


agencies deal with a highly selected group. 
Without hoping, therefore, to develop a sam- 
pling method of any great precision, we have 
contented ourselves with making as many 
inquiries as possible about the characteristics 
of this particular marriage group from the per- 
sons interviewed on other marriage matters in 
the course of our general field visits, have fol- 
lowed up by correspondence a number of slight 
clues, and have supplemented information 
gained in these ways by adding to it data 
about 27 cases reported by Arthur W. Towne, 
former superintendent of the Brooklyn So- 
ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren.! Our sources of information include not 
only child welfare and family welfare societies, 
but license issuers, judges, chiefs of police, 
sheriffs, probation officers, clerks of court, 
school officials, and, in a few instances, lawyers 
and clergymen. Sometimes a first clue of a 
child marriage has been an item of news in a 
daily paper, but no cases have been included 
from this source or from marriage annulment 
petitions without further verification. 


1Towne, Arthur W.: “Young Girl Marriages in Criminal and 
Juvenile Courts” in Journal of Social Hygiene for July, 1922. Alsoa 
paper on “Juvenile Marriages,” p. 208 ff. in Proceedings of New York 
State Conference of Charities and Correction, Buffalo, 1920. 


60 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


In all, we have a few pertinent facts about 
each one of 250 married children reported to 
us. These 250 were married in 31 different 
states. Twenty of the 250 married one another, 
so the total number of marriages, as already 
indicated, was 240. In addition to these 250 
children we have information about 15 others 
whose marriages were prevented. While we 
know the ages of all of the 250, we do not know 
in every instance the ages of those they mar- 
ried—there is definite information about the. 
ages of these latter in less than half of the 
cases. We know that the children’s parents 
consented to the marriage in 109 instances, 
and that they withheld their consent or that 
the marriage took place without their consent 
in 79 instances, but about 52 of the marriages 
there is no information as to whether the neces- 
sary parental consent was lacking. With these 
gaps duly noted and our readers warned that 
material gathered about so small a number is 
suggestive rather than conclusive, let us see 
what our group of cases contains. 


In the first place, Americans still have the 
romantic idea that there is something pecu- 
liarly idyllic about the marriage of a boy and 

61 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


girl who have fallen in love with each other. 
Dickens noted this characteristic of ours many 
years ago during the public readings of his sec- 
ond American tour. A prime favorite with his 
audiences was that story, told by the Boots at 
the Holly Tree Inn, of two little children who 
ran away to Gretna Green to get married. But 
unfortunately the most characteristic child 
marriages are not of this sort. The nearest 
approach in any of our 240 cases to romance is 
the following: 

The pair were schoolmates, the boy 15 and 
the girl 17, when they eloped. They told a 
license clerk in a nearby town across the state 
border that both were 21. The license was 
issued and they were married by a recorder. 
Two witnesses to the ceremony are required by 
law in that particular state. The state’s re- 
cords show that one of the two witnesses in 
this case was probably the wife or daughter of 
the civil celebrant officiating at their marriage. 
For lack of funds, the two had to return to 
home and school and keep their marriage se- 
cret. When the boy’s father discovered it he 
was able to obtain a decree of annulment. We 
may assume that this escapade ended less 


unhappily than is usually the case with child 
62 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


marriages, though for a period the two families 
involved must have had an unhappy time. 

In all probability the license issuer, cele- 
brant, and witnesses of the marriage in the 
foregoing case were more than careless. In the 
following they were shockingly so: A boy of 16 
and a widow of 49 left their own state and were 
married in another one in which the law re- 
quires that an interval must elapse between the 
issuance of a license and the marriage cere- 
mony. The boy’s parents knew nothing of the 
proposed marriage. False ages and residences 
were sworn to by bridegroom and bride, the 
date on the license registry was falsified to con- 
form with the law requiring an interval before 
the marriage, a ‘‘witness’’ swore falsely as 
to the boy’s age and an agent procured the 
services of a clergyman to marry them. The 
bride, it is alleged, spent more than a hundred 
dollars to effect these various special arrange- 
ments. When the boy’s parents undertook to 
annul the marriage and secure the punishment 
of the official and others concerned, the wife 
fought legal proceedings and spirited the boy 
away to a third state, where she succeeded in 
marrying him once again. This second case 
was something more than an escapade; it 

7 63 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


must mean unhappiness either now or in the 
future for everyone concerned. 

Our 240 marriages include 20 of boys who 
married before they were 18 years old. In 
seven of the 20 the boy was younger than his 
bride, and in four of these seven he was much 
younger. Out of 79 marriages of girls under 16 
years old in which we know the age of the 
bridegroom, less than half show a difference in 
age that is below 10 years, 20 others show 
much greater disparity in age, and some bride- 
grooms were four and even five times the ages 
of their brides! Only 17 of the marriages 
could be described as boy and girl marriages; 
the average age of the 79 bridegrooms whose 
ages were known was 26.7 years. Arthur 
Towne tells of a wife of 15 jumping rope on the 
sidewalk, and urged by her husband’s people, 
with whom she lived, to do her jumping in the 
backyard only, as such conduct was unbe- 
coming in a wife. On the whole, the romance 
of child marriages vanishes upon nearer view. 
This will be even more evident when we analyze 

1In Massachusetts (see Vital Statistics of Massachusetts for 1919, 
p. 46) only 11.8 per cent of the brides under the age of 20 in 1919 
married husbands in the same age group. In the more normal situa- 


tion shown in the next higher age group of 20 to 24, nearly 48 per 
cent of the brides married inside their own age group. 


64 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


the outcome of such marriages later in some 
detail. 


Another characteristic of our 240 marriages 
is the haste with which they were arranged 
and consummated. Some of them border upon 
abduction without its occasional feature of 
brute force. 

An example of this is the case of a schoolgirl 
of 14—one carefully protected in her home, 
and with a good character record 1n the church 
school that she attended. A stranger ten years 
her senior met her and some of her school com- 
panions at a county gathering, and induced 
her to go with him to a nearby town to get 
married. He showed knowledge of the laws 
against abduction and how to avoid them, for 
he sent the child alone to a hotel where she 
was to stay the night and where she registered. 
He did not molest her that night. The next 
day he instructed her to claim at the license 
office that she was 18, and paid a cab driver 
$5.00 to act as witness at the wedding. He 
then took her to his own room, sending her the 
following day to her parents to say that she 
had known and loved him for a year and a half. 

1 See page 60 ff. 
5 65 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


Still under his influence, the child actually told 
this tale, but a little later broke down, ac- 
knowledged the truth, and said that she had 
been intimidated and really disliked the man. 
In jail, the husband admitted that he had a 
venereal infection. The parents dropped their 
attempt to prosecute this fellow on his threat 
to contest the annulment of the marriage. 

The following are notes illustrative of simi- 
lar cases that have been reported to us in less 
detail: 


A 12-year-old colored girl in an Alabama city had an 
older sister to whom a certain man had been paying 
attentions. Suddenly, he ran off with the younger girl 
and married her. Her mother applied for an annulment. 


A 13-year-old white girl in another city of the same 
state ran away with a man of 34 who promised her 
a new dress. A probation officer reports that this 
promise was the chief inducement. 


A girl of 15 in New York State went to the marriage 
license office with friends who were seeking a license. 
While there, she was dared to marry another friend of 
the bride and groom, a youth of 19. Taking the chal- 
lenge, she was granted a license on the spot and 
married the same day. This marriage was annulled later. 


Instances like these, and they are not un- 


common, illustrate the value of a law which, 
66 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


before a marriage license can be issued, re- 
quires advance notice to the issuer of licenses 
that the candidates intend to marry. The 
usual requirement of such a law calls for an 
advance notice of five days.! Such a measure, 
in combination with the proof of age require- 
ments that we shall propose in Chapter V, 
would if honestly enforced make marriages 
similar to those just described almost impos- 
sible. Every one of them took place without 
the knowledge of parents, and the children in- 
volved were either within the ages for which 
parental consent to marry was required by law 
or else were too young for legal marriage even 
with such consent. 

It must be acknowledged, however, that, 
among the various motives which seem to lie 
behind child marriages, a not infrequent one 
is the desire to escape from unhappiness in the 
home. Failure on the part of parents to under- 
stand their children or to win their participa- 
tion in home plans and purposes, and failure 
even more fundamental when the home is 

1 Eight states now require an interval between the application for 
a marriage license and its issuance. These states, arranged in the 
chronological order of their adoption of the law are Maine, Wisconsin, 


New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Nebraska, 
and Georgia. 


67 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


without standards and the children are neg- 
lected, are large factors in these marriages. 
They are factors that must not be ignored in 
any broad program of marriage reform; but 
they belong to a consideration of the home 
itself and of the relations established there be- 
tween parents and children rather than to our 
present analysis.~ In a few instances we have 
well-substantiated accounts of mothers being 
jealous of the youth and attractiveness of their 
daughters, and one of a mother’s marrying her 
child of 15 to her own paramour, but these are 
the exceptional situations, and our aim is to 
set forth the more usual circumstances found 
in this child marriage group. 


A motive often encountered is the use of 
marriage as a means of escape from law en- 
forcement—to avoid punishment for disorderly 
conduct, for example, to evade the require- 
ments of the compulsory education law, and 
soon. As these evasions will be considered in 
another connection,! the only one that we shall 
attempt to illustrate here is that of detention 
in an institution for mental defectives. 

A 15-year-old girl escaped temporarily from 


1 See pages 83, 96 and 100. 
68 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


a home for the feeble-minded in Kentucky in 
the following manner: The mother and the 
prospective bridegroom visited the institution 
and got permission to take her out to have her 
picture taken. Instead of returning with her 
as promised, they went back to their home 
town, where the child was married. Notice 
of the girl’s disappearance was sent to the 
family welfare society which had been respon- 
sible for her commitment. The society pro- 
cured a warrant and returned the girl to the 
Home. In some states the fact of marriage 
would have released her, and this is what the 
mother assumed would happen. 

The extent to which feeble-mindedness enters 
into our problem is not adequately indicated, 
in all probability, by the information at hand 
about these cases. The behavior of a number 
of the children suggests subnormality, but in 
most cases no diagnosis had been made, and 
in only eight was feeble-mindedness known to 
exist. It must not be assumed, however, that 
most child marriages bear a relation to the 
problem of mental defect. 


An ugly and difficult aspect of these 240 
marriages is their relation to commercial ex- 
69 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


ploitation and immorality. One child married 
at 12 was known later to be running a dis- 
orderly house. A child of 14 was married to the 
man who had criminally assaulted her, and the 
charge against him was then withdrawn. A 
child of 14 was taken by her husband to live in 
a notorious resort. A child married at 15 
charges that her husband has forced her to be- 
come a prostitute. A child of 11 made a simi- 
lar charge against the man that her stepmother 
forced her to marry. Another child of 11 had 
been married by her parents to a married man. 
A child of 15, found in a disorderly house, was 
returned to her family, and her husband sent 
to jail. Another child of 15, and one of 12, 
married men who later were imprisoned for 
criminal assault. 


We should re-emphasize the fact that the 
reports, case records, interviews, and letters 
from which these items of information about 
child marriages are gathered were almost all of 
them from sources more likely to be familiar 
with unhappy endings than with happy ones. 
Nevertheless, we were not prepared for the 
very temporary character of this group of 
marriages. In 11 cases the husbands and 

70 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


wives separated in a few days, in seven cases 
in a few weeks, in eight cases in a few months, 
in 16 cases they never lived together or else 
never established a home of any kind. Out of 
go cases in which present status was known, 
only 16 married pairs were still living together 
at the time our information was received. In 
28 of the 90 cases, annulments or divorces had 
been granted, or proceedings were still pending. 
All of which gives a depressing picture of care- 
lessly drawn marriage laws and of even more 
careless marriage law administration followed 
by great instability in the marriage relation. 


Closely connected with the foregoing facts 
are the ages at which these 250 children were 
married. Of the total, 61, or 24.4 per cent, 
were under 14, and 12 of these 61 were 12 years 
old, while five were as young as 11; 62, or 24.8 
per cent, were 14 years old; 1109, or 47.6 per 
cent, were 15; and eight (boys), or 3.2 per 
cent, were 16 or 17. 

Full credit, on the other hand, should be 
given for the discrimination shown and pains 
taken in the 15 other cases already mentioned 
as known to us in which a marriage was pre- 
vented after the license had been applied for. 

71 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


In one case the marriage was prevented by de- 
tectives, in two cases by a church worker, in 
another case by the parents of the girl, and in 
11 cases by the vigilance of license issuers. 

The license situation in these child marriage 
cases taken as a whole, however, is far from 
satisfactory. Out of the 240 marriages re- 
corded, the number of illegal issuances of 
licenses found was as follows: 


TABLE 4.—MARRIAGE LICENSES ILLEGALLY ISSUED IN 
VHES220 CASES OTM DIED 


Bride or bridegroom or both below the minimum age 79 
Parental consent given 30 
Parental consent not given 29 
No information as to parental consent 20 
Bride or bridegroom or both of age requiring parental 
consent, but parental consent not given 50 


ooo 


Total licenses illegally issued 129 


That more than half of the 240 licenses 
were illegally issued suggests grave faults of 
administration; that nearly half were legally 
issued suggests the need of further legislation. 

The Chicago Municipal Court, in a report 
for 1917, said: 

The number of these childish victims of illegal mar- 
riages is increasing at such a rate that drastic action 


should be taken by the courts to have the law prohibit- 
ing the issuance of marriage licenses to minors enforced. 


72 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


Not long ago a 13-year-old bride was brought into the 
Court of Domestic Relations. She had been married 
several months and was pregnant. She wanted to have 
her husband arrested for non-support. Although the 
least observant person could see that she was an unde- 
veloped child, physically slight and childlike in appear- 
ance, she had been able to secure a marriage license, 
though unaccompanied to the marriage license bureau 
by her mother or a guardian, and she was able to get a 
minister to marry her to a man twice her age. The man 
was sent to the House of Correction for a long term and 
a heavy fine imposed.! 


There have been improvements in license 
administration in Chicago since this was pub- 
lished, but as regards the country at large simi- 
lar evils persist. Our 250 children, as already 
reported, come from 31 different states, and in 
no state of the Union, probably, are happen- 
ings such as have been described wholly excep- 
tional. In every one of these states the simple 
provisions for assuring proof of age suggested 
in Chapter V are needed. 

It is often assumed that the practice of child 
marriage is limited in the United States to 
foreign-born children, or at least to the chil- 
dren of the foreign born. But this is very far 

1Tenth and Eleventh Annual Report, the Municipal Court of 
Chicago, 1915-1917, p. 113. 

73 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


from being true of the country as a whole, 
though it may approximate the truth for a few 
sections of it. As we have seen, there were 
18,388 married girls who were still under 16 
when the 1920 census was taken. Of this 
number 11,959 were native white girls of 
native parentage, and only 2,452 were either 
foreign-born white or else native-born white 
of foreign or mixed parentage.! Even more 
striking are the facts as to the girls included 
in the foregoing figures who were under 15. 
There were 5,554 girls so enumerated, of whom 
the native white girls of native parentage con- 
stituted 62.1 per cent and the first and second 
generation foreign white girls only 17.9 per 
cent. 


II. EXCEPTIONS IN PREGNANCY CASES 

The Child Welfare Commission of Missouri, 
which succeeded in establishing a minimum 
marriageable age of 15 in that state in 1919, 
reports through its secretary that an exception, 
permitting the issuance of licenses below this 
age, and intended to cover pregnancy cases 
chiefly, had to be added after their bill was 


1 Included in the 18,388 married girls given in the census as under 
16 were 3,833 Negroes. 


74 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


introduced. This was done to overcome the 
opposition of legislators who, in all probability, 
would have defeated the measure without 
some such addition. Provision for exceptional 
cases 1s unnecessary, of course, in the 14 states 
still having the common law minimum age for 
girls of 12. In 10 of our states, however, ex- 
ceptions are provided for in some form in the 
law,' and we note a tendency among license 
issuers in other states visited to grant licenses 
below the legal age when pregnancy is claimed; 
even though they are exceeding their legal 
authority in so doing. Only five states make 
definite reference to pregnancy in the excep- 
tions provisions of their marriage law, but in 
practice this condition is the chief reason for 
granting exceptions. In all states making ex- 
ceptions in the law save Connecticut and Dela- 
ware the exercise of discretionary power rests 
with some designated court, and our field 
visits covered an examination of court practice 
in pregnancy cases 1n five such states. 


1 The states having these exceptions in the law are Arizona, Con- 
necticut, Delaware, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New 
Hampshire, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Indiana is not included; section 
8366 of the code of 1914 (Burns’ Statutes) seems to provide for general 
appeals to a court when licenses are refused, rather than for exceptions 
to the established marriageable ages. 


7) 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


In Illinois, where the minimum age is 16 
years for girls, by an interpretation of the 
bastardy law the Attorney General ruled in 
1913, ‘though not without some doubt,” that 
it was the duty of the county clerk to issue a 
license for marriage in rape or bastardy cases 
upon an application for marriage license which 
was otherwise regular, and that, upon the 
marriage following, “‘any prosecution for rape 
or bastardy will abate.” This ruling has been 
challenged informally by at least one judge, 
but license officials were following it in most 
of the Illinois offices visited. Judge Arnold of 
the Juvenile Court of Chicago held that girls 
under 16 who are wards of the court must wait 
until they are 16 before their marriage can 
take place. 

In Michigan there is a special provision that 
a judge of probate shall issue a license without 
publicity to any girl or woman who makes a 
statement under oath that she is with child 
which, if born before her marriage, will be 
illegitimate; or who has lived with a man and 
has been considered as his wife, and so on. 
This act also provides for the secret filing of 
application and license record. A judge in one 
city of the state was found to have granted five 

76 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


such applications of girls under 16 in the year 
of our visit, and to have rejected two. In 
another Michigan city, the judge makes a prac- 
tice of asking a social worker to investigate 
such cases. This worker reports that in some 
instances the marriages have been in the inter- 
est of public morals, but that usually they are 
entered into simply to avoid criminal prosecu- 
tion of the man in the case and have proved 
neither happy nor permanent. The prosecut- 
ing attorney in this same city had never known 
of a marriage performed under the act that 
had had a successful outcome. 

In an Ohio town, an examination of juvenile 
court records for three and a half years re- 
vealed 15 cases in which the court had granted 
permission to marry below the marriageable 
age on account of pregnancy. A former pro- 
bation officer of this court stated that the 
judges often refuse applications. In his opin- 
ion the appeals that had been granted, though 
legitimatizing unborn children, had often 
meant unfortunate marriages. In one in- 
stance a divorce had been applied for only a 
few months after the marriage. 

In Massachusetts our field workers found 
more individualized attention to these “‘ex- 

i; 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


ceptions’’ cases than they were able to dis- 
cover elsewhere. There were marked differ- 
ences in the procedure of different judges, of 
course, but in Suffolk County (which includes 
Boston) all applications for permission to 
marry made to the probate court must be filed 
with the court twenty-four hours in advance 
of the hearing. This gives anyone interested 
an opportunity to be heard. It is true that 
during the war the issuance of such court 
orders increased in Suffolk County from 15 in 
1917 to 38 in 1918, and 42 in 1919. Later 
figures, however, show a decrease. One Bos- 
ton judge grants the orders only after careful 
inquiry into the surrounding circumstances. 
This procedure constitutes, in fact, the nearest 
approach to careful, case by case, marriage law 
administration that we have found anywhere 
in the course of our field studies. Applications 
from all girls who are not Italians are sent to 
one of the probation officers, and no decision 
is made without this officer’s written report. 
In the case of Italians, the judge requires a 
letter from the girl’s priest. He finds that 
priests do not favor marriages under 16 and 
that fewer orders are being granted to Italians 
in consequence of this procedure. The head 
78 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


of a children’s agency in Boston reports that 
among the reasons for refusal of court orders 
are feeble-mindedness on the part of one or the 
other of the two candidates for marriage, mixed 
blood, a criminal record or tendency, and in 
general such other conditions as would indi- 
cate that the marriage would be socially un- 
wise owing to absence of the elements upon 
which a stable marriage can be built. “Many 
orders are granted which we, as social workers, 
would refuse, but on the whole our probate 
judges have given careful consideration and 
have exercised wise judgment.” 

In Delaware exceptional cases are passed 
upon, in effect, by the candidates themselves, 
it being provided merely that the legal age 
restrictions shall be waived if the two candi- 
dates for the license swear that “‘they are the 
parents or the prospective parents of a child.” 

In one of the marriage market towns or 
Gretna Greens visited, a license issuer was 
found who stated without hesitation that 
licenses are issued from his office to girls under 
the required minimum age of 16 whenever 
they are pregnant. There is no legal exception 
in that particular state. This official stated 
that he enters the age on his record as 16, ex- 

79 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


plaining that there is a state statute which 
permits one to make an untruthful statement 
under oath “‘if it is for the protection of a 
lady’s reputation.’ He could not refer us to 
this statute. In a license office in another 
state an issuer was found who waives the pa- 
rental consent clause of the marriage law when- 
ever there is evidence that a girl is to become 
amother. Similar illegal practices were found 
in six other license offices. 

A significant feature of the situation, from 
both a statutory and an administrative point 
of view, is the fact that always in the law, and 
usually in practice as we found it, there is no 
requirement that a condition of pregnancy be 
proved through examination by a qualified 
physician. The mere assertion that pregnancy 
exists 1s ordinarily accepted. Thus a note 
attached to a form used for special license ap- 
plication under the Michigan law reads as 
follows: 


Note—Under the amended act, as contained in 
the laws of Michigan 1899, p. 364, no provision is 
made for the verification of the sworn statement of 
the bride by examination of the “family physician 
of one or both parties,” as provided in the original 
act. 

80 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


The fact that the more rigid requirement of 
the original act was repealed is significant. It 
has been claimed that most child marriages 
are “‘forced marriages’’; that they are ren- 
dered necessary, in the eyes of parents at 
least, by the fact of pregnancy. This claim is 
not borne out by our studies. Pregnancy has 
been found to be only one of the causes for the 
marriage of girls under the age of 16. Even 
in Michigan, where, as stated, marriage li- 
censes may be issued to candidates under that © 
age for practically no other cause, only 55 such 
licenses were issued in the whole state during 
the year analyzed. In Ohio, the Cincinnati 
court reported that it had not more than one 
or two such cases a year. 

There is still a wide gap between the legis- 
lative view of the right way to treat the girl 
under 16 who has had sexual relations and the 
views of child welfare specialists. The latter 
feel that only under exceptional circumstances 
does marriage at the time promise her or her 
child the best chance of a healthy, useful life. 
Whether she is pregnant or not, they feel that 
there is no one way of solving her difficulties. 
There are many ways that have proved them- 


selves by repeated tests to be well adapted to 
6 81 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


different situations and different types of girls. 
The general public, on the other hand, usually 
has one sovereign remedy for everybody in 
these cases, and this the very one which 
has worked well least often. Moreover, the 
public does not even take pains to assure 
itself, through its officials, that the condition 
to be covered by special legal exception actu- 
ally exists. 


IV. THE CONFLICT WITH CHILD WELFARE LAWS 


The most conspicuous conflict of child mar- 
riage laws with other measures that relate to 
children is a conflict with the compulsory edu- 
cation law in certain states where girls are re- 
quired to attend school until they are 16 or 
over unless gainfully employed. In 23 states 
having this educational requirement the mini- 
mum marriageable age was lower than 16 at 
the time of our special inquiry on this point. 
To discover what happens in these states, and 
the degree of conflict between their educational 
and their marriageable age requirements, we 
addressed a letter of inquiry to, or held inter- 
views with, 41 city superintendents of schools, 
with the following results: 


82 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


18 reported no cases of conflict brought to 
their attention 

16 reported that married girls were not com- 
pelled to attend school 

7 reported that married girls were compelled 
to attend school 


Information received from other sources in a 
few of the 18 cities in which we were told that 
the question had never been raised leads to the 
inference that, in these particular cities at 
least, the question of conflict in the laws does 
not come up because the compulsory educa- 
tion law is always set aside when a schoolgirl 
marries. The State Superintendent of Public 
Instruction in California in 1920 was of the 
opinion that the compulsory education law 
was enforced, but our field visits brought out 
statements to the contrary from school people 
in three California cities, and agreement with 
the Superintendent in only one. From seven 
cities reporting enforcement come instances of 
child marriages being prevented by educa- 
tional authorities. The following are examples: 


The mother of a girl of 15 thought that if her daughter 
married the girl would no longer have to go to 
school and could go to work. She was told that her 


daughter must attend school whether married or not. 
83 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


The candidates had already taken out a marriage li- 
cense, but when they learned that school attendance 
would be compelled, they did not marry, and the girl 
remained in school. 


We prevented the marriage in this case [writes a chief 
attendance officer in regard to a girl whose marriage 
license had already been issued] by obtaining a writ 
from the juvenile court, and having the child detained 
in the Detention Home. The girl was later placed on 
probation to the juvenile court and ordered to attend 
regularly. Later, we had two cases in the juvenile court 
in which the girls had gone through an illegal marriage 
ceremony, and in each case the girl was placed on pro- 
bation to the juvenile court and ordered to return to 
school, and the man in each case was directed to annul 
the marriage. Our laws are stringent enough, and | 
hope some day we can get the prosecuting attorney to 
prosecute the man in cases of this type. 


This conflict of marriage laws with the edu- 
cation law was considered by the National 
League of Compulsory Education Officials in 
1920, and a resolution was adopted urging uni- 
form laws in all states which would forbid the 
marriage of boys and girls of compulsory 
school age. Wherever compulsory education 
has become an accepted custom this would 
seem to be a reasonable solution. 

That so many states are thinking more pro- 

84 


MARRIED CHILDREN 


gressively when they think educationally than 
when they think matrimonially, may be due 
to the crude romanticism attaching to boy and 
girl marriages, of which mention has already 
been made. Only a few years ago the editor 
of a daily paper, in discussing a higher mini- 
mum age for marriage, found it necessary to 
apologize for seeming to wish to “‘kick ro- 
mance out of the affairs of the twentieth cen- 
tury.” 

Not only in departments of education but. 
in the functions of a number of other public 
departments—the issuance of working papers 
to minors, the control exercised over young 
delinquents and defectives, and so on—a mini- 
mum marriageable age which is below 16 runs 
athwart the purpose of child welfare laws. In 
so far as such laws are beneficent in their effect, 
a lower minimum for marriage often nullifies 
that effect. Despite several court rulings to 
the contrary (in Philadelphia, Detroit, and 
Minneapolis, for example) it would seem to be 
necessary actually to remove the conflict in 
the statutory law. Thus, a Denver lawyer 
calls our attention to the fact that under Eng- 
lish common law a minor who marries is freed 
from parental control, and cites a Colorado 

85 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


decision to this same effect. As it is usually 
the parent who is prosecuted for failure to send 
a child to school, the enforcement of a com- 
pulsory education law becomes, he contends, 
to that extent impossible. 


86 


CHAPTER IV 
PARENTAL CONSENT 


HUS far youthful and child marriage has 
BIE ices discussed in these pages with no 

more than an occasional reference to the 
authority of parents. It now becomes nec- 
essary to examine in some detail that aspect of 
the marriage of minors in the United States 
which relates to what is technically known as 
‘parental consent.” 


I. PARENTAL CONTROL OF MARRIAGE IN THE 
PAST 

In many lands and many periods of the 
world’s history the parent or other relative, 
or else the head man of village, clan, or tribe, 
has had absolute power over all matrimonial 
alliances. At certain periods this has been 
truer in theory than in fact; the bride has had 
more of a voice than has appeared on the sur- 
face, and natural parental affection has devel- 
oped side by side with very different control- 
ling motives. At many other times, however, 
some of them not far distant, the young people 

87 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


have been helpless. Marriage has conformed 
to a tradition ‘‘quite independent of all in- 
dividual wishes,’’ and the power of the parent 
has been exercised in the interest of such insti- 
tutions as the family, the tribe, the caste, and 
the political unit. Even today this institu- 
tional attitude toward marriage is not wholly a 
thing of the past. 

Westermarck is at pains to point out that, in 
countries without a literature, the elders were 
the sole authorities on religion; that the young 
people were kept in awe partly by mysterious 
rites known only to the old men, partly by the 
fact that the goodwill of parents would be 
needed after their death as a protection from 
evil spirits. Standing halfway between the 
clan and the immediate family, and exercising 
great influence over the marriage of all mem- 
bers of the latter, were the relatives. Thus, 
among the Natchez Indians, the heads of both 
families, “usually great grandfathers,’ had the 
final decision. In some tribes and clans the 
maternal or paternal aunt of the bridegroom 
had this power. A Melanesian never married 
“against the will of his father’s sister.’”! 

The practice of betrothing children in early 


1 Westermarck quotes Rivers here, Vol. II, p. 280. 


88 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


childhood, in infancy, and even before birth is 
credited to widely scattered parts of the globe. 

At different times in the world’s history 
parental control of mating has extended from 
before birth, at one extreme, to far beyond 
maturity at the other. The authority of the 
Roman father was supreme throughout the 
life of his child, though with certain restric- 
tions in later times. The Greeks and Teutons 
could expose their children in infancy, could 
sell them in case of urgency, and could give 
their daughters in marriage without consulting 
their wishes. 

Throughout all the diverse marriage cus- 
toms recorded by students of the subject, 
parental control seems seldom to have been 
exercised with a view solely to supplementing 
the child’s relative helplessness. On the con- 
trary, the proprietary character of the parental 
relation is emphasized at every turn by such 
institutions as marriage by purchase, marriage 
to procure the services of a valuable domestic 
for the bridegroom’s father, marriage in order 
of seniority, and so on. Elopement was the 
sole alternative which gave a certain degree of 
release from a tyranny that only increased 
with the accumulation of property. An early 

89 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


New Jersey marriage law (1668) required the 
consent of “‘parents, masters, or overseers ;’”! 
and an irate New England father of the op- 
posite political persuasion from that of the 
father of his daughter’s suitor could, in 1660, 
have the latter fined £5 by the colony for mak- 
ing love to her without parental permission.’ 

One of the earliest recognitions in this coun- 
try of the responsibility of the state appears in 
the codification of laws made by the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony in 1641. It is there pro- 
vided that, “If any parents shall wilfully and 
unreasonably deny any child timely or con- 
venient marriage, or shall exercise any un- 
natural severity towards them, such children 
shall have free liberty to complain to authority 
Loreredress,3" 


Note throughout the foregoing brief para- 
graphs the recessive character of parental 
control over marriage. The right to marry, 
whether with or without parental consent, is 
denied in theory at least in 17 of our states to 


1 Howard, George Elliott: A History of Matrimonial Institutions, 
Vol. II, p. 309. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1904. 

2 Howard, Vol. II, p. 163. 

8 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Third Series, Vol. 
VIII, p. 230. Boston, 1843. 


gO 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


girls below the age of 16, and in 22 states to 
boys below the age of 18. As will be shown, 
lack of administrative efficiency often lowers 
these minima in actual practice, but even so, 
the situation today in this country reduces 
parental authority to very narrow limits in 
the more progressive states—to two years only 
of required consent for the marriage of girls 
(16 to 18), and three years for boys (18 to 21). 

Some students of the history of marriage, 
notably Elsie Clews Parsons, prophesy and ad- 
vocate the total elimination of parental con- 
sent. It should be added, however, that usu- 
ally these reformers also advocate making 
“maturity the only age criterion for mating,” 
and would have the legal age of majority made 
the minimum marriageable age.1 But we have 
seen that chronological age is at best a rough 
and ready measure of maturity, though there 
is no better test at hand. Between the girl 
who Is unusually mature at 16 and the one who 
is singularly immature at 18 no law now dis- 
criminates on the ground of this difference 
in development. All is left to parents or to 
chance. The parent, though not perhaps an 


1 Parsons, Elsie Clews: Social Freedom, p. 33. New York, G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, 1915. 


OI 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


expert judge, is at least a competent witness. 
While, therefore, everyone is working to bring 
about better administration of our marriage 
laws, it would be the part of wisdom to provide 
for some court, or better still for some depart- 
ment, of review specially equipped to deal com- 
petently with problems of children and young 
people, and to which son or daughter on the 
one hand or parents on the other might appeal 
when they cannot agree on a question of 
parental consent to a marriage. It may sound 
logical to say that if a girl is mature enough for 
marriage she is mature enough to make her 
own decision unaided,! but actual situations 
are not nearly so clear cut as all this. In 
the absence at the present time of any satis- 
factory substitute for parental consent, we 
should be sorry to see parents wholly deprived 
of the limited power they now have. As will 
appear presently, however, what some parents 
need far more than power Is insight and fore- 
sight. Where these are wholly lacking, the 
state must be able to throw some safeguard 
around the young. Only where the parents 


1See Race Improvement, by LaRaine Helen Baker, p. 50. New 
York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1912. 


* See the discussion of substitutes for parental consent on page 1ooff. 


Q2 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


of a girl between her sixteenth and eighteenth 
or of a boy between his eighteenth and twenty- 
first birthday cannot agree with the matri- 
monial intentions of daughter or son would 
there be need for any appeal to outside author- 
ity, but the right of appeal should be open. 
Signs are not lacking, meanwhile, that with 
the spread of social education and of education 
for marriage, parents will become able in the 
future to abandon any merely legal authority 
for that inherent authority which is the fruit of 
understanding and caring. 


Il. PARENTAL CONSENT AND CHILD MARRIAGES 


As stated in the preceding chapter, a large 
number of the child marriages reviewed took 
place with parental consent. There were 
known to have been 109 of these out of the 
total of 240 studied. In 30 of the 109 mar- 
riages the children were so young that they 
were below the age at which a marriage license 
could have been issued legally even with the 
consent of the parents. 

What do these figures mean in terms of 
family and social welfarer First as to ages, we 
know that four of the children were married 
with parental consent at the age of 11, that 

93 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


five had such consent at the age of 12, and that 
18 had it at the age of 13. In one of these 
13-year-old cases the license issuer was so im- 
pressed with the child’s immaturity that he 
appealed to the corporation counsel of the city 
to prevent the marriage; but the issuer was 
advised that, as the state law allowed any girl 
of 12 or over to marry with the consent of her 
parents, there was no way of preventing it. 
In a case in another state, where the minimum 
marriageable age for girls is not 12 but 16, 
parents married off a daughter of 14, swearing 
that she was 16. Many violations of the mar- 
riage law are traceable to this practice of 
accepting affidavits in lieu of proof where proof 
could easily be produced. 

Our information is more complete about the 
immediate circumstances surrounding these 
109 marriages approved by parents than about 
their later history, but we have definite in- 
formation as to what happened in 36 instances. 
To give as concrete a picture as possible of the 
happenings for which parents have assumed 
responsibility in this connection these 36 cases, 
several of which have already been referred to, 
are summarized briefly as follows: 


94 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


No. 1. A probation officer reports a boy under 18, 
who produced at the license office of a southern town a 
forged letter of consent by his parents to his marriage toa 
child of 14. The parents of the girl had given their ap- 
proval, but the boy’s parents proceeded to have the 
marriage annulled and their son committed to a reform 
school. 


No. 2. A California judge reports the marriage of a 
child of 12 to a man of 39. A license was refused, but 
the girl’s parents accompanied her across the border 
into Mexico, where they were successful in obtaining 
the necessary sanction to effect the marriage. The 
judge reporting this case had issued a separation order, 
had made the child a ward of the court, and had directed 
that annulment proceedings be brought. Before this 
last was done, however, the husband in the case was 
sent to prison for criminally assaulting another child. 


No. 3. In another California case reported by a li- 
cense issuer the girl seemed to him so young that issu- 
ance was refused, but she and the prospective bride- 
groom appeared later with a sworn statement from her 
mother that she was 17. Eight months later the mother 
applied for an annulment of the marriage on the plea 
that, at the time it took place, her child was only 11 
years old. Prosecution of the man for perjury failed 
on the ground that the girl was pregnant. 


No. 8. A clerk of court reports the sale, in a north 
central state, of a 14-year-old child by her father to a 
man who wanted to marry her. She was brought into 
court later for attempting to poison her husband. The 


95 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


“sale’’ was alleged by the child and denied by her 
parents, but the clerk believed the story of the parents 
to be less worthy of credence than that of their daughter. 


No. 9. An account of this feeble-minded child, whose 
marriage was arranged by her mother, is given on page 60. 


No. 14. The story of a little Chinese girl of 11, which 
was reported by a church worker, is confirmed also by 
court records and by reports from several other social 
agencies. The marriage annulled by the court had been 
arranged by the child’s stepmother. The clergyman 
who officiated claimed later that the little girl had been 
made to appear older at the wedding. She ran away in 
two or three months, stating that the Chinaman to 
whom she had been married had detained her until then 
against her will. 


Nos. 16 and 17. Two cases are reported by a New 
York State protective agency of four children unable 
to obtain working papers because they could not or 
would not make their school grades. As two were boys 
and two were girls, their parents overcame this diffi- 
culty by arranging two marriages—one of a girl of 15 
to a boy of 17; the other of a girl of 15 to a boy of 19. 
Working papers were issued, but the 19-year-old boy 
ran away soon after his marriage. 


No. 20. Another New York State case, reported by 
a clerk of court, is that of a girl of 15 under the care of 
the juvenile court but married by her mother without 
court consent to a boy of 18. As soon as the court heard 
of the marriage it had the girl committed to an industrial 
school. 
96 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


No. 21. In a southern state having a marriageable 
age minimum of 14 for girls, the county solicitor reports 
‘a child of 12 who was married with her mother’s con- 
sent. Later the husband was convicted under a state 
law which makes marriage with a girl under 14 a misde- 
meanor. He served a sentence of one year. 


No. 22. A family welfare society in the Middle West 
reports verification of the marriage of a child of 13 toa 
man of 23 with the consent of her parents, who swore 
that she was 16 years old. The juvenile court issued 
warrants for the arrest of the girl’s parents and husband 
on charges of perjury and of contributing to the child’s 
delinquency. The father was fined $200 and the hus- 
band the same amount. The marriage has been an- 
nulled. 


No. 23. A district attorney in Texas reports the 
marriage of a child of 11 with the consent of her mother. 
The child’s future husband swore that she was 16. As 
he was found to have another wife living, he was sent 
to prison for five years on charges of bigamy, rape, and 
false swearing in order to obtain a marriage license. 


No. 26. A clerk of court in Wyoming reports the 
case of a 13-year-old girl whose mother swore that she 
was “abcut 16,” and gave her consent to a marriage 
that was later annulled. 


No. 251.1. Teacher and probation officer in a southern 
city both report a child of 15 married to a man of 22 who 


1 Numbers higher than 250 mean that consecutive numbers were 
given to a large group of cases of youthful marriage, some of them 
over and some under the child marriage age limits. 


7 97 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


had tuberculosis. The child wept when forced by her 
mother to marry him. He took his bride to another 
city and, in a few days, the child left him. 


No. 256. A child of 13 in California applied for a 
divorce. The judge reporting her case says that she had 
been married with her mother’s consent to a man more 
than twice her age. 


No. 271a. A mother eager to marry off her 12-year- 
old daughter swore that she was 18 at the time of her 
marriage to a soldier. The marriage took place in Con- 
necticut. The husband deserted his wife in two months, 
and later it was found that he was married already when 
this second marriage took place. (These facts were 
verified from the annulment proceedings and from the 
report of a social agency in the distant state in which 
the child’s mother lived.) 


No. 272. A family welfare society in Connecticut 
reports a girl of 15 married with parental consent on the 
claim that the girl was pregnant. This proved to be 
untrue. The married pair separated in a few weeks. 


Nos. 311 and 312. A family welfare society in the 
South reports two sisters, aged 15 and 12, married with 
their mother’s consent to two soldiers to avoid court 
action for disorderly conduct. The dates of their birth, 
as sworn to on the licenses, were only two weeks apart. 
The younger one after her marriage was known to have 
been running a disreputable house. 


No. 313. A family welfare society in the South re- 
ports the marriage of a child of 14 to a man with a 
venereal infection. Her mother swore that she was 16. 

98 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


The pair separated in seven months and the wife sued 
for divorce later. 


No. 335. A clerk of court in a southwestern state 
reports that a child of 14, married with the consent of 
her guardian, is said by the superintendent of the state 
hospital to be a moron. Since her marriage, she has 
been brought into court on the charge of murdering her 
stepchild. 


No. 346. A family welfare society in New York 
State reports the annulment of a marriage in which the 
girl was 15 and was married with her father’s consent. 


Nos. 347a, 347b, 347c. The secretary of a child pro- 
tective agency in New York State reports that three 
children, of 15, 14, and 13 respectively, married with 
the consent of their parents. The first charged that her 
husband was compelling her to be a prostitute, the 
second left her husband in three months and was placed 
in an institution, the third left her husband in three 
days. 


No. 359. Another child protective agency in New 
York State reports the case of a feeble-minded girl of 15 
with an illegitimate child married by her father to a 
total stranger, aged 36, who was seeking a housekeeper. 
The husband soon appealed to a court to commit his 
wife to an institution for the feeble-minded, and this~ 
was done. 


No. 362. A family welfare society in New York 
City reports the marriage of a girl of 15 with parental 
consent. Her husband died two years later, but during 
those two years the marriage was a successful one. 


oe 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


No. 367. A child protective agency in New York 
State reports a child of 14 married by her father to a boy 
of 18 because he could not keep her off the streets at 
night. A few weeks later she was found in a notorious 
resort. Upon her urgent request the agency placed her 
at work where her husband could not find her. At last 
accounts she was doing well. 


Nos. 371 and 371a. Another children’s agency in 
New York State reports the cases of two wayward girls 
of 15 who, just sentenced to a term in the state reforma- 
tory for girls and not yet placed there, were married 
hastily by their mothers to two worthless fellows of the 
town. These girls were taken to the institution after 
the marriage, but their husbands were able to procure 
a court order for their release. 


No. 377. This same agency reports the case of a 
pregnant child of 14 married by her mother to a dis- 
reputable man who deserted her in two weeks. 


No. 377b. A New York State agency reports a 15- 
year-old girl who eloped with a man without marrying 
him. The police arrested the pair and persuaded the 
girl’s mother to consent to her daughter’s marriage. 
The man’s family, with whom the two went to live, did 
not treat the bride well and she eloped again in two 
months. The marriage arranged by the police has since 
been annulled, and the girl has married again. 


No. 377c. The same agency reports an Italian father 
who is alleged to have sold his child of 14 to a prospec- 
tive husband for $40. The child soon refused to live 
with her husband and the agency procured a court 

100 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


order two years later which permitted her to live apart 
from both husband and father. 


No. 377d. Still another case reported by this agency 
is that of an Italian girl of 14 married with parental con- 
sent to a man who deserted her almost immediately. 
The child married a second man later while still legally 
bound to the first one, doing this, apparently, out of 
sheer ignorance. 


No. 388. A social worker in a southwestern state re- 
ports the marriage of a girl of 15 with parental consent. 
The girl has obtained a divorce on the ground of in- 
fidelity. 


No. 395. An attorney general in a southern state re- 
ports the marriage with parental consent of a child of 13 
toa man of 36. The child’s age was misrepresented and 
the pair never lived together. An annulment had been 
applied for. 


As already suggested in another connection, 
the very early marriages that prove to be a 
success are less likely to come to our attention 
than are those that fail. This is as true of the 
marriages in which parental consent is granted 
as of those in which it is withheld. We have 
always to remind ourselves of the multitudes 
of fathers and mothers who are not only taking 
their parental responsibilities seriously but 
who are seeking guidance and help in the vari- 


ous crises with which they find themselves un- 
IOI 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


able to cope single-handed. Legal and ad- 
ministrative safeguards against child neglect 
do not affect a majority of parents and chil- 
dren save as such neglect and exploitation in 
even a minority of cases concern every citizen; 
but from our field interviews and other in- 
quiries we are led to believe that in no part of 
the United States are instances of parental 
carelessness, similar to those given here, an 
unheard of thing. 


THES PRESENT SITUATION 


On the other hand, many children and 
young people of parental consent age are mar- 
rying without consent. We have verified 297 
individual instances, occurring in 38 different 
states, of age falsification in marriage license 
offices due to this lack, and our examination of 
license office records has furnished us further 
evidence. The increase in youthful marriages 
at the age of 18 which is shown in Table 5, 
for example, is partly actual and partly only 
apparent. In 45 marriage license offices situ- 
ated in states requiring parental consent for the 
marriage of girls under 18, we were able to ex- 
amine a sufficient number of licenses to justify 
comparison of the number issued to girls 

102 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


recorded as 17, 18, and 19 years of age. It will 
be seen that a considerable number of licenses 
were issued to girls of 17. A much larger num- 
ber were granted to girls recorded as 18, which 
might reasonably be expected. But in 28 of 
the 45 offices fewer licenses were recorded for 
girls of 19 than for girls of 18. The table ar- 
ranges these offices according to the ratios of 
the number of 18-year-old girls to the number 
of 19-year-old girls. 

On their face the figures in this table might 
suggest that girls of 18 are, relatively to those 
of 17 and 19, more numerous in the cities and 
towns at the head of this list than in those at 
the bottom, but what they suggest to us is 
something quite different. It is true that the 
one or two hundred consecutive records of 
issuance examined in each place do not supply 
a conclusive basis for comparison, and that it 
is also necessary to make due allowance for the 
larger number of girls who would wish to 
marry at 18 rather than at 17. But why 
should there be more than three times as 
many girls marrying at 18 as at 19 in some 
places, why should there be more than twice as 
many in some others, while in yet others the 


ratio is reversed? Thus, in Schoharie, New 
103 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


TABLE 5,—MARRIAGE LICENSES -ISSUED TO GIRLS 
RECORDED AS 17, 18, AND 19 YEARS OF AGE IN-4§ 
RIGENSE-GELICES 


Ratio of 

Marriage license mets Girls | Girls | Girls Re “ i 

office Sore aid ay 17 | of 18 | of 19 ale ay 

examined 19-year 
girls 
Schoharie, N. Y. 100 4 15 4 3.8 
Albany, N. Y. 100 I 7 2 3.5 
Monroe, Mich. 200 4 53 16 3.3 
San Rafael, Cal. 200 I 32 12 207 
St. Joseph, Mich. 100 I 17 7) 2.4 
Hugo, Okla. 200 2 54 23 2.3 
Jeffersonville, Ind. 100 Z 25 12 2.1 
Altus, Okla. 274 13 a 35 2.0 
Camden, N. J. 100 4 12 6 2.0 
Ithaca, N. Y. 100 a) 12 6 2.0 
Mason, Mich. 100 7 i8 9 2.0 
Tulsa, Okla. 100 4 22 II 2.0 
Vancouver, Wash. 100 3 13 7 1.9 
Birmingham, Ala.® 100 eZ 16 9 1.8 
Clayton, Mo. 100 I 17 10 1.7 
Evergreen, Ala. 100 4 25 15 Ly 
Fort Payne, Ala. 200 16 52 31 iv 
Rock Island, IIl. 205 17 29 17 1.7 
Los Angeles, Cal. 100 2 8 5 1.6 
San Diego, Cal. 100 O 11 7 1.6 
Crown Point, Ind. 108 Za 17 II 1.5 
Milwaukee, Wis. 100 5 12 8 1.5 
Murphysboro, IIl. 100 7 19 13 1.5 
Sacramento, Cal. 100 5 9 6 1.5 
Vincennes, Ind. 100 10 18 12 1.5 
Rochester, N. Y. 200 3 14 10 1.4 
Davenport, la. 200 11 20 16 13 
Duluth, Minn. 280 3 33 27 1.2 
Chicago, III. 500 6 43 43 1.0 
Waukegan, III. 100 oO 12 12 1.0 
Enid, Okla. OS” ites 13 15 9 
New Bedford, Mass. 1,195 | 36 81 04 xe) 


a Only the licenses issued to white persons are included for this 
office. 


104 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


TABLE 5,—(Continued) 


Ratio of 

Marriage license peu Girls | Girls | Girls bes 

office eater SE of 17 | of 18 | of 19 19-year 
girls 
Oklahoma City, Okla. 200 5 25 28 9 
Rhinelander, Wis. 116 7 16 18 9 
San Francisco, Cal. 200 4 12 14 9 
Montgomery, Ala.® 100 3 1] 14 8 
Oshkosh, Wis. 300 2 17 21 8 
Santa Ana, Cal. 100 2 13 16 8 
Superior, Wis. 273 9 21 25 8 
Peoria, Ill. 200 5 20 28 Fi 
Wichita Falls, Tex. 87 6 8 II 7 
Baraboo, Wis. 100 3 8 15 5 
Boston, Mass. 500 - 20 45 4 
Belleville, Ill. 200 5 7 29 Z 
New York, N. Y. 200 I 3 17 2 


a Only the licenses issued to white persons are included for this 
office. 


York, which stands first on the list, nearly four 
times as many girls of 18 as of 19 received 
licenses, while in New York City the situation 
is the other way round. It should also be 
noted that, out of the total of 45 places, there 
were nine that could be described as marriage 
market towns, and seven of these are in the 
upper half of the list, while four are among the 
first 10. All of this, taken in connection with 
the many individual cases of age falsification 
known to us, suggests the probability that, 1n- 
stead of recording actual ages, the table indi- 
105 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


cates roughly the extent to which girls below 
18 have, in the absence of parental consent, 
falsified their ages, have claimed to be 18 and 
thus been able to obtain marriage licenses. 

In few matters relating to marriage is lack 
of supervision more apparent than in the vary- 
ing interpretations given to those clauses in 
the laws which require parental consent. Fre- 
quently these clauses are vague, and our field 
visits sometimes brought to light wholly dif- 
ferent practices in the different offices of one 
state. Only three states—Illinois, New York, 
and Rhode Island—specify that parents must 
appear before the license issuer, and exceptions 
are made in New York State if parents are non- 
residents of the state. Most states require the 
filing of written consent by parents either in all 
cases or else in lieu of their appearance, and 
about half of the states that have adopted this 
procedure specify that the signature must be 
verified in some way. 

In states allowing verbal consent, the possi- 
bility exists that consent by telephone may be 
accepted. As a matter of fact, parental con- 
sent 1s so accepted in some offices. The inade- 
quacy of telephone communication needs no 


illustration here. Occasionally a better means 
106 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


of communication has been used; telegraphic 
dispatches have been sent by the issuer to 
parents at a distance and have been answered 
through the same medium. 

Evidence is at hand of several cases in which 
girls of 14 and 15 have forged the signature of 
father or mother to letters consenting to their 
marriage. There are also a large number of 
cases in which persons appeared before the 
license issuer and, misrepresenting themselves 
to be the parents of candidates, had their evi- 
dence accepted. Apparently, some form of 
identification by responsible witnesses is nec- 
essary to protect the real parents from this 
form of fraud. When parental consent has to 
be given in writing—a provision which must 
be allowed in those cases, at least, in which 
the parents are at a distance—it is important 
that the signatures should be properly attested 
by a notary. 

The present parental consent situation, even 
within the restricted boundaries in which 
consent still applies, is far from satisfactory. 
Upon that phase of it which involves parental 
forgiveness we have not dwelt. Often de- 
scribed in newspapers and not unknown to 
anyone Is the hasty marriage in which the boy, 

107 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


or more often the girl, is a minor and of 
parental consent age, but in which the parents 
have their first intimation in a telegraphic 
message or a letter that the marriage has been 
consummated. Parental forgiveness follows 
almost perforce. Father and mother find 
themselves making the best of what is often a 
bad bargain.! The state’s share in these im- 
broglios, even if set right later by the annul- 
ment proceedings to be described presently, 1s 
adjusted very clumsily. For every genuine in- 
terest involved—for that of father, of mother, 
of child, and of the state, as represented by the 
license issuer—there is a far better and simpler 
way to safeguard these interests than that of 
annulment; namely, to require in each license 
issuing office satisfactory proof of age. With 
slight change if any in present laws, such proof 
can be required. The method of procuring it 
is described in the next chapter, Proof of Age. 

1The same predicament was described long ago, though in dif- 
ferent terms. In the Memoirs of an American Lady, by Anne 
MacVicar Grant, first published in 1808, we are told that in the 
Albany of 1770, “‘If the temper of the youth was rash and impetuous, 
and his fair one gentle and complying, they frequently formed a rash 
and precipitate union without consulting their relations, when per- 
haps the elder of the two was not above seventeen. This was very 


quietly borne by the parties aggrieved. The relations of both parties 
met, and with great calmness consulted on what was to be done.” 


108 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


IV. PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR PARENTAL 
CONSENT 

An examination of existing marriage laws 
and of the discretionary interpretations that 
have been made of them reveals a definite 
tendency to give judicial officers as well as 
parents the power of consent or of review in 
certain specified circumstances and for speci- 
fied ages. Already in New Hampshire court 
consent is necessary in addition to parental 
consent for the marriage of girls under 18 years 
of age; in five states the age for which court 
consent must be obtained is under 16;! and 
in two other states consent of a court is nec- 
essary under the age of15.? In several of these 
states such consent is required also if the male 
candidate is under 18, and in New Hampshire 
if he is under 20. This control by the state sup- 
plementary to that of the parent is in keeping 
with control which the state exercises with re- 
gard to the property of minors. The rights of 
the parent, as the child’s legal guardian, are 
subject to careful limitation. The parent or 
guardian cannot sell or lease the child’s real 
estate except upon an order from the court, 


1 Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Ohio. 
2 Missouri and Oklahoma. 


109 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


which scrutinizes with care every proposal 
presented to it so that the minor may have 
fair treatment. 

In two states, California and New York, 
court control has been established over the 
marriage of children of juvenile court age with- 
out specific law, and the child whose marriage 
the juvenile court wishes to prevent is made a 
ward of that court subject to its orders. Two 
instances of this sort involving two girls of 13 
in California were both reported in San Diego. 
In New York State similar control was ini- 
tiated in 1911 in Monroe County, of which 
Rochester is the county seat, by the county 
court which has had jurisdiction in children’s 
cases since 1910. This power has now been 
extended to county courts throughout the 
state, except where the leading city of a county 
has a juvenile court. In Monroe County the 
fact that parents are willing to consent to the 
marriage of a girl under 16 years of age is 
regarded as evidence of improper guardian- 
ship. If the court hears of an intended mar- 
riage at such an age through a school teacher 
or from any other source, the girl is taken 
under the care of the court through a petition 
alleging improper guardianship. When girls 


IIlO 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


are thus held, parents sometimes make vigor- 
ous efforts to have them released on bail, 
hoping to arrange their marriage before the 
petition is heard. As this would defeat the pur- 
pose of the procedure, bail is never accepted. 

The fact that this exercise of the power of 
review can be effective was testified to by so- 
cial workers in Rochester not connected with the 
court. One of these in a private society reported 
two instances in which the society had pre- 
vented or postponed the marriage of girls 
under 16 by notifying the license issuer. Ac- 
cording to another social worker only one 
marriage of a girl known to be under 16 had 
been permitted by the court of Monroe County 
in the preceding ten years. 

The supremacy of the authority of the court 
over that of the parents when a child is a ward 
of the court was apparently sustained by the 
attorney general of New York State in a 
Rochester case. A girl of 15 under the care of 
the court escaped from a home in which she 
had been placed. With her mother’s consent 
she obtained a license and was married in a 
city outside the jurisdiction of the court whose 
ward she was. As shown in citing the case 
earlier (No. 20 on page 96), she was arrested and 

II] 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


committed to an industrial school. The school 
authorities hesitated to admit her at first be- 
cause she was married, but full presentation of 
the facts by the court and consultation with 
the attorney general induced them to accept 
her. 

In connection with marriages below the 
marriageable age the Ohio law expressly au- 
thorizes the substitution of court consent for 
parental consent. It also provides that, in case 
of pregnancy, the juvenile court “with the 
consent of one or both of the wards or with 
the consent of the parent or guardian”? may 
authorize the issuance of the license when 
either one or both of the contracting parties to 
the marriage are under the specified ages—18 
for males and 16 for females. For this purpose 
the candidates are made wards of the court. 
If a judge, on the authority of the word “‘or”’ 
in the section quoted, authorizes such a mar- 
riage, the license official can issue the license 
without parental consent. 

Some thoughtful students of social welfare 
are inclined to question the wisdom in the long 
run of making a court the referee in all ques- 
tions arising between parents and children. 
Much of the training of judicial officers and 

112 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


many of the rules of court procedure have little 
relation to the human problems involved. 
Whether, in the future, a court and court pro- 
cedure will be found to be the final solution, or 
whether some public department of child wel- 
fare will prove to be a better adviser, it is too 
early in this experimental stage to predict. 
But it may be suggested that the department 
of government which develops the most help- 
ful advisory service for parents and is most 
successful in aiding them to prevent the dis- 
locations described in this chapter will also be 
the one best fitted to deal with difficulties be- 
tween parents and their minor children when- 
ever, In connection with a proposed marriage, 
these become acute. 


V. MARRIAGE ANNULMENT 


A disqualification that exists at the time 
a marriage takes place is the only possible 
ground for its annulment. Annulments, there- 
fore, are a better index than are divorces of the 
extent to which the laws regulating marriage 
fail to function. The disqualifications existing 
at marriage that are recognized as ground for 
annulment are “mental or physical incapacity, 
fraud, force, or error, non-age, consanguinity or 

8 113 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


affinity, a former spouse living, or other funda- 
mental impediment to the union.” Non-age— 
failure to have achieved the legal age for mar- 
riage—is the only one that can be considered 
here. . 

One of the most serious aspects of successful 
age falsification followed by license issuance is 
that, through annulment proceedings later on, 
a system of trial marriage is made possible 
which ends in a cheap form of divorce. Ex- 
cept in states where the marriageable age is 
fixed at the low minimum of 12, 13, or 14, this 
possibility not infrequently becomes an actual- 
ity. The state prohibits by law marriage be- 
low specified ages, but once the marriage has 
taken place and has also been consummated, 
the law in practically all of our states declares 
the marriage valid. That a marriage can be 
both illegal and valid is one of those knotty 
questions to which there are two sides. The 
only point to emphasize here is that, though 
the marriage is valid until annulled, it is void- 
able, or can be annulled, by a court of law. 
The possibility 1s thus created of a person’s 


1 Schouler, James: Marriage, Divorce, Separation, and Domestic 
Relations, Vol. II, p. 1413. Albany, Matthew Bender and Company, 
1921. 


114 


PARENTAL CONSENT 


contracting, if young enough, a valid marriage 
which may be set aside at pleasure. In almost 
all the states, if it can be proved that the child 
concerned was below the specified minimum 
age at marriage, the court has no discretion. 
Annulment must be granted. This fact alone 
would make satisfactory proof of age at the 
time of marriage one of the most important 
administrative reforms connected with mar- 
riage, though there are many other reasons be- 
sides for urging it. Such trial marriages are 
taking place today in considerable numbers tn 
certain states. The situation 1s saved from be- 
coming worse than it is throughout the country 
by the fact that the minimum marriageable 
age for girls in most states 1s so low—in 23 
states either 14 or lower. Few girls wish to 
marry or are forced into marriage below the 
age of 14, and few, therefore, are in a position 
to terminate their marriages by making a 
claim of non-age. 

On the other hand, a relatively large number 
of girls who are above the minimum age for 
marriage are having their trial marriages an- 
nulled every year in the inferior courts on the 
ground that parental consent was lacking, 
though they were still of an age requiring 

135 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


parental consent when married. In the su- 
preme or appellate courts, however, we have 
found after diligent search only two decisions 
which sustain an annulment on these grounds; 
and there are many decisions in which the 
annulment has been refused. Nevertheless, 
the lower courts continue to grant annulments 
in increasing numbers for lack of parental 
consent. They do this probably for the simple 
reason that no one has been sufficiently inter- 
ested to challenge them. 


116 


COAL LE RAY, 
PROOF OF AGE 


HOSE of us who were living in states 
where there used to be great demand for 
the wage labor of children were impressed 
with the fact that it was easy enough to raise 
the legal age at which they could be gainfully 
employed provided always that the new meas- 
ures establishing a higher minimum age were 
without any administrative safeguards. So 
long as affidavits of parents, for example, were 
the only evidence required, the statutory mini- 
mum for the issuance of working papers might 
be 13, 14, or 16 years, but the ages at which 
many children were entering industry con- 
tinued to be 10, 11, and 12. Opponents of 
child labor reform were shrewd enough to see 
that the requirement of documentary evidence 
from impartial sources, such as birth and bap- 
tismal records, was the effective and conse- 
quently, from their point of view, the danger- 
ous part of a child labor law. 
A situation parallel to this one comes to 
light through our field investigations of the 
117 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


relation of the state to marriage. We have 
presented only a tithe of the evidence that we 
have gathered, but what we have given, when 
passed in quick review, shows that the prac- 
tice of child marriage is still little under con- 
trol. We have estimated that more than two- 
thirds of a million people are living in the 
United States today whose lives have been 
fundamentally influenced by the fact that they 
have been one of the two principals in such a 
marriage. Out of 240 child marriages studied, 
we have just seen that licenses were known 
to have been issued with parental consent 
in nearly half of the marriages and that, in 
30 of the number thus approved, the chil- 
dren were so young that they were below the 
age at which marriage with parental consent 
was legal. We have seen further that in 79 of 
the 240 marriages the children involved were 
able, by means of false affidavits, to get their 
licenses without parental consent. Not only 
the minors under 16 but those over that age 
who are still within the parental consent ages 
have little difficulty, in fact, in obtaining 
marriage licenses by the simple process of 
signing affidavits at the license office declaring 
that they are seven, six, five or only one year 
118 


PROOF OF AGE 


older than they really are. It may be ques- 
tioned whether many of the children and young 
people who swear falsely to these documents 
have any conception of the nature of an oath. 
In some states having a statutory minimum 
of 16 years, marriages under that age seem to 
be as frequent as they are in others that have 
a minimum age of only 12—the laws are dif- 
ferent but, through the acceptance of false 
affidavits in the former group of states, what 
actually happens is much the same in both 
groups. And finally, because the foregoing 
things are true, the courts are appealed to, 
and annulment proceedings are being insti- 
tuted in many more cases than would be neces- 
sary if better evidence were demanded in 
marriage license offices. 

In the light of public administrative ex- 
perience which has extended over twenty 
years and more in some departments of gov- 
ernment that find a proof of age requirement 
necessary, what steps could be taken by issuers 
of marriage licenses, without causing long 
delay or working undue hardship to anyone, 
to remedy the foregoing evils? Before at- 
tempting to answer this question by an ex- 
amination of the methods developed success- 

119 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


fully in other administrative fields it will be 
necessary to review briefly the usual proced- 
ures and the best proof of age practices that 
we have found in the license offices visited: 


I. KINDS OF PROOF NOW REQUIRED 


From license issuers themselves have come 
conflicting opinions as to the extent of the 
falsification against which precautionary mea- 
sures are necessary. We find that those issuers 
who have proved to be least familiar in other 
particulars with what is happening in their 
own offices are the officials who are surest that 
cases of falsification are rare. One license issuer 
assured us that, so far as he was aware, not a 
single candidate had sworn falsely regarding his 
or herage. On the other hand, we havea large 
number of statements of which these few are 
good examples: 


From two California issuers: “Probably not a day 
passes that there is not a case of age falsification.” 
“We have much trouble because of age falsification.” 


From four Illinois issuers: “If my office is the first 
one approached [by applicants for licenses] I probably 
get the truth, since young people frankly give me ages 
below those required by law. In one case the man was 
about 22 and the young woman looked the same age, 

120 


PROOF OF AGE 


but he said that she was 17. When told that her father 
would have to give his consent, both left the office. 
The next day I read in a newspaper that they had ob- 
tained a license in a neighboring city.” 

“Age falsification gives us a great deal of trouble. 
People joke and laugh about falsifying in making the 
application.” 

“T think possibly hundreds of candidates marry 
under age.” 

“We issue licenses from two different offices in this 
county. Candidates refused at one office on account of 
age apply at the other. They get several years older 
during the journey of a few miles to the second office, 
so now each office telephones to the other one as soon 
as an applicant for a license is refused.” 


The practice of notifying offices in adjoining 
towns or counties whenever an application has 
been refused for cause is one that we found 
in several of the more carefully administered 
license bureaus. 

Information gained through interviews with 
68 license issuers in 25 states during which 
their procedure in matters relating to evidence 
of age was covered may be summarized as 
follows: 

In 57 of the 68 offices no proof is required. 
Dependence is placed instead upon the affi- 


davits of the young people who apply or upon 
I2] 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


those of their witnesses, supplemented in cer- 
tain instances by the affidavits of parents. 
Disinterested evidence, preferably of a docu- 
mentary kind, is never sought in these offices. 
Representative statements from this group 
are the following: 


No attempt is made to prove age in any way. The 
oath of the applicant is accepted. 


The oath of applicants is always taken in the matter 
of age. They are never asked to bring any proof. 


We never require proof of age other than the oath of 
candidates. We let the responsibility rest with them. 
Sometimes a candidate not prepared to furnish parental 
consent has his prospective bride wait outside the office 
and states that he is over 21 and that she is 19. As she 
must be 21 in our state [to be married without parental 
consent] he is told that the license cannot be issued. 
Soon he returns and explains that she is really 21, but 
that she gave a false age at first because she did not 
wish her real age to be known. In that case we require 
both candidates to swear to the revised age and issue 
the license. 


In five of the 68 license offices, however, 
other evidence than an affidavit of the candi- 
date or the parent is required, though it is 
required only occasionally. When parents 


have notified one of these offices beforehand 
| (9292 


PROOF OF AGE 


of the probable application of a child and have 
asked that no license be issued, the child can- 
didate, if born in the city, is sent upon appli- 
cation to the registry of births for a certificate, 
and is thus “‘given an opportunity to with- 
draw without committing perjury.” Another 
issuer in this group says that although it 1s 
“equivalent to an open insult”? to question 
anyone’s word under oath, in doubtful cases 
if the applicants were born in the township, 
search 1s made in town records. | 
In three of the 68 offices proof better than 
the affidavits of candidates is sought not only 
occasionally but whenever the suspicions of 
the issuer are aroused and, in three others, 
evidence additional to affidavits is required for 
all candidates below specified ages. Several 
of the large cities, such as Chicago and Boston, 
have developed a regular routine procedure 
for all who claim to be of certain ages. Thus, 
for girls claiming to be either 18 or 19, the 
Boston license issuer requires a certified trans- 
cript of birth certificate, baptismal certificate, 
or of some substitute document which 1s 
satisfactory to him. While our field repre- 
sentative was in his office, a young man, who 
had applied five days before for a license to 
123 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


marry a girl of 18, was refused the license at 
the expiration of the required interval be- 
cause he had failed to bring the certified trans- 
cript of her birth certificate which he had been 
told to bring. 

North Carolina’s marriage law provides 
that if a license issuer knowingly or without 
“reasonable inquiry’’ issues a license without 
parental consent for a candidate whose age 
makes such consent necessary, he shall forfeit 
$200, payable to the parent of the boy or girl 
involved. The law is an old one, but recently 
it has been given unusual explicitness by a 
series of supreme court decisions. In all of 
these the parents have been sustained, the 
Supreme Court of the state establishing a high 
standard in its interpretation of the “‘reason- 
able inquiry”’ imposed upon license issuers in 
this matter of age. It was expressly denied 
by the court that the requiring of affidavits 
from prospective brides and bridegrooms, or 
from persons who professed to know them, was 
sufficient. In one North Carolina case the 
court held that the license issuer was under 
obligation to use as much caution as the 
cashier of a bank would use when asked to 
cash a stranger’s check. ‘The license issuers 

124 


PROOF OF AGE 


of the state feel that the law, when thus inter- 
preted, inflicts a hardship upon them. During 
1921 their newly formed state association had 
a bill introduced in the state legislature which 
eliminated the “reasonable inquiry”’ provi- 
sion and specified instead that license issuers 
should satisfy themselves regarding the ages 
of candidates by requiring them to file affi- 
davits on this point. The bill was defeated. 

Affidavits of parents are not conclusive 
proof of age, as we have seen; but when license 
issuers accept the evidence of other relatives— 
brothers, cousins, and so on—or of friends, 
they go even farther astray. Some of the 
North Carolina issuers got into trouble through 
accepting evidence of this sort. 

Another source of confusion is the non- 
appearance of the bride at the license office. 
In the 25 states included in this part of our 
inquiry, there was great diversity of practice 
at this point. In certain offices in 10 of these 
states (seven had no specific statutory provi- 
sion allowing license issuance under such con- 
ditions) we found that neither candidate had 
to appear before the license issuer. Offices in 
six of the states required only one candidate 
to appear at the license office. In 1o other 

125 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


states, though the appearance of both candi- 
dates was not required by law, we found 17 
offices in which it was required in practice. 
Finally, in all but one of the offices visited in 
five states we found that both by law and by 
habitual or usual office procedure the two can- 
didates were required to appear. To anyone 
familiar with license offices in which this rule 
is followed it seems strange, after observing 
the ease with which the requirement is met, 
that more states have not adopted it. 

One of the most careful license issuers inter- 
viewed gives the following instance of a case 
in which he was deceived because, contrary to 
his usual practice, he had not required the 
presence of both candidates. A man known 
by him to bear an excellent reputation applied 
for a license, giving the age of the young 
woman he was about to marry as 23. In that 
state parental consent is required up to the 
age of 21. The license was issued, and only a 
few days later the issuer learned to his chagrin 
that the bride was not quite 16. 

In certain Illinois and Massachusetts offices, 
though in these states the appearance of both 
candidates is not compulsory, the plan has 
been adopted of requiring the appearance in 

126 


PROOF OF AGE 


person at the license office of the prospective 
bride as well as the bridegroom whenever her 
age is given either below or only a year or two 
above the upper limit named by law for paren- 
tal consent. While, as just shown, this method 
alone does not do away with age falsification, 
it is a step in the right direction. 

Some license issuers have elaborate plans 
for discovering falsification by demanding 
dates in rapid succession, or by comparing 
dates of birth with ages given, but one issuer 
reports that in several instances magazines 
bought on the train by out-of-town candidates 
and left behind in his office had shown calcu- 
lations made in pencil on the cover in order 
that the owners might be ready to evade dis- 
covery through just such a system of cross- 
questioning. On the other hand, neither hesi- 
tation nor blundering under this sort of heck- 
ling is any sure indication of untruthfulness. 
There are better ways of discovering the truth. 

It is evident from this short review of the 
proof of age practices found in our field visits 
that a number of issuers are honestly striving 
to get down to a basis of fact and improve the 
type of evidence accepted, while others are 
still satisfied with any routine procedure which 

127 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


“lets them out,’ as they are in the habit of 
phrasing it. Almost universally, however, 
the affidavit of a parent 1s still regarded as the 
best possible proof, though some issuers are 
willing to go so far as to cast doubt upon the 
evidence of parents who are not American 
born. In one case, where our field investi- 
gator had found by the birth records that a 
girl to whom a marriage license had been 
issued was less than 16, the issuer and his 
deputy agreed, when questioned, that “she 
did not look 16.” ‘‘But,’’ added the official, 
“her mother swore to it, and what else was 
there to dor” 


II. KINDS OF PROOF AVAILABLE 


The “what else”’ has been worked out very 
carefully by a number of our states in connec- 
tion with another public function; namely, with 
that of issuing working papers to children who 
have met certain educational and age require- 
ments and are entitled to enter industry. 

This is not the only gateway, however, at 
which satisfactory proof of age has become a 
necessary precaution. About 122,000 searches 
of birth records are made annually at the 
New York City Bureau of Vital Statistics. 

128 


PROOF OF AGE 


These records are consulted for a variety of 
reasons. Automatically now the age of every 
child is “‘cleared’’ through this Bureau upon 
its admission to school, and the date of birth, 
if there is a record, is reported to the school 
authorities and becomes a part of the child’s 
school record. To obtain a passport from the 
government enabling one to travel abroad 
with the necessary proof of citizenship, one’s 
birth certificate or an attested transcript of 
it must be produced if available. For cer- 
tain positions in the civil service (federal 
and local) that have an upper or lower age 
limit it is necessary to provide proof of age 
before taking the required examinations. 
Chauffeurs cannot get a license without pro- 
ducing similar evidence, nor can mothers 
receive allowances from the Child Welfare 
Board until they have given proof that their 
children are of the ages stated. Voters whose 
right to vote is challenged on the score of 
youth sometimes have to get documentary 
evidence from this Bureau. Army and navy re- 
cruits often apply there when required to prove 
that they are old enough to enlist. Parents, 
on the other hand, seek the registry of births 
to prove that their boys, who have already en- 
9 129 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


listed, are below the required age. Many public 
utility companies and commercial houses are 
in the habit of requiring birth records in select- 
ing new employes. 

This does not exhaust the list, but, next to 
the school entrance requirement, the largest 
single demand for attested transcripts of birth 
records comes from parents or from their chil- 
dren at the time the latter leave school and are 
about to enter industry. As far back as 1903 
the New York legislature passed a law requir- 
ing parents who desire to put their children to 
work to file documentary proof of age when 
applying for employment certificates. The 
new legislation provided for alternative kinds 
of documentary evidence—for birth records, 
baptismal certificates, or other religious rec- 
ords. The experience of New York State in 
the administration of the early and amended 
forms of its child labor law is especially val- 
uable, because many of the children applying 
for working papers in the City of New York 
are foreign and were born in places far distant. 
If the proof of age provisions of the child labor 
law can be well administered there, they can 
be well administered anywhere. 

The amended law now provides that there 

130 


PROOF OF AGE 


shall be three types of evidence: The first or 
primary type consists of (1) an attested trans- 
cript of the birth certificate, (2) a duly certi- 
fied transcript of a record of baptism, or (3) a 
passport, showing the date of birth of the child. 
If none of these documents can be produced, 
the employment certifying officer must satisfy 
himself that they are not obtainable; in which 
case, if the child appear to the officer to be of 
the required age, other specified but secondary 
forms of documentary evidence may be ac- 
cepted. Only as a last resort is physical ex- 
amination substituted for documentary proof. 
Two physicians must be designated- by the 
board of health to examine the child separately 
and certify that he or she is of the required 
age. Birth certificates issued for employment 
certificate purposes are procurable without fee. 

How have these requirements worked in 
practicer Jeanie V. Minor, of the New York 
Child Labor Committee, who has worked 
out with the public authorities the various 
types of evidence available and has had more 
to do than any other one person with shaping 
present proof of age requirements in this par- 
ticular field, has supplied us with the following 
analysis of the types of proof accepted in New 

131 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


York City in 1923 for 1,000 consecutively 
issued employment certificates. Primary evi- 
dence of age (birth certificate, baptismal cer- 
tificate, or passport) was produced in 87 per 
cent of the thousand. The birth certificate 
was the form of evidence proffered most often 
—in 49 per cent of these cases. The remaining 
13 per cent, for which secondary evidence had 
to be substituted, included foreign school rec- 
ords, hospital records, court records, immigra- 
tion records, vaccination certificates, citizen- 
ship papers, and school census age certificates. 

Miss Minor lists 16 forms of secondary docu- 
mentary evidence of age. In the proved ab- 
sence of primary evidence, she regards these 
as of value in the following order: 


. Immigration records 

. Naturalization papers 

. Insurance policies 

. Adoption papers 

. Records of social welfare agencies dealing with 
families and children 

. Census age records—federal 

. Census age records—local 

. Certificates of circumcision 

. Bible records 

10. Confirmation certificates 

11. Sunday school records 

12. Court records 

13. Commitment records to institutions for children 

14. Hospital and clinic records 

15. Records of settlement clubs and classes 

16. Vaccination certificates 


132 


Oo CONTI GD WwBhWh = 


PROOPJ OP CAGE 


Not to lean too heavily upon the experience 
of New York City, where there is good en- 
forcement, we have sought data covering the 
same period, as to the ease with which under- 
age children can obtain working papers and as 
to the proportions in which the different types 
of required evidence are proffered, in 10 large 
cities—one other city in New York State and 
the leading cities of seven other states. In 
Washington, D. C., the situation was unsatis- 
factory. Many children were reported to: be 
working, and in 43 per cent of the applications 
for working papers no evidence of age was 
produced. Inthe absence of such evidence the 
parent’s sworn statement was accepted. In 
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rochester 
(New York), Boston, Indianapolis, Cleve- 
land, Columbus (Ohio), and Chicago, social 
workers reported, in the winter of 1923, that 
In rare instances employers took a chance and 
gave work to children under age, but that, in 
these cities, it was practically impossible for 
under-age children to get working papers. 
The evidence demanded in all these places 
was substantially the same as that required by 
the New York law, but the type of evidence 
most often proffered varied from city to city. 

133 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


In Rochester (where records of two months 
only were examined) 50 per cent of the total 
of documents accepted were baptismal certifi- 
cates, while only 2.3 per cent were passports. 
In Pittsburgh, 50 per cent of the total were 
birth certificates and 42 per cent baptismal 
certificates, while school records supplied the 
remaining 8 per cent.!. In Indianapolis birth 
certificates constituted 67 per cent of the total, 
with insurance papers and school records 18 
and 12 per cent respectively, but the insur- 
ance records, to be accepted as evidence, had 
to be not less than four years old. In Cleve- 
land, birth certificates were 70 per cent of the 
total, and in only one-tenth of one per cent of 
the applications was there failure to supply 
some sort of documentary evidence. Boston 
reported physical examinations made of all 
children applying, but satisfactory documen- 
tary evidence was lacking in so few cases that 
officials very seldom had to consult the medical 
examiners for evidence of age. Philadelphia 
estimated that only 2.5 per cent of its appli- 


1 School records to be received as evidence should be those of 
the first school attended and should give the age at time of school 
entrance. 


134 


EPRUOE-GRFAGE 


cants were unable to provide satisfactory 
evidence. | 
The procurability of evidence would seem to 
be established for these particular cities. Good 
administration in Wisconsin makes an even 
better showing, and that state-wide.! It must 
not be inferred, however, that there is perfect 
law enforcement in the child labor field or that 
all parts of the country have risen to the 
standard here indicated for our large cities. 
After many years of experimentation, state by 
state, child labor reformers are now seeking an 
amendment to the federal Constitution which 
will enable them to consolidate their gains. 
Unlike the marriage law reformers, who hardly 
have made a beginning in working out stan- 
dards, they have at least three decades of 
practical experience behind them, and will be 
prepared to incorporate its results into any 
federal legislation following upon the adoption 
of an amendment. This experience points the 
way; it suggests the importance of working 
out each step, in the earlier stages of a pro- 
gram of reform, locality by locality. Not so 


1'Taylor Frye, in charge of the industrial permit system for all 
children under 17 in the state of Wisconsin, reports that, for the 
year 1922, 89 per cent of all permits issued were granted on the 
evidence of either birth or baptismal certificates. 


135 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


many years ago factory inspectors, mine in- 
spectors, and employers were convinced that 
the affidavits of parents were the only avail- 
able form of evidence of age, and child labor 
reformers had one of their hardest battles with 
state legislatures at this very point. The prac- 
tical and detailed way in which every part of 
their program has been developed is going to 
make it easier to win the campaign against 
child marriage. 

Not only are standards of child employ- 
ment advancing; school standards are improv- 
ing also, and the more closely evidence of age 
for marriage is related to our school systems 
the better. As schools come to adopt the 
policy already described of verifying the age of 
pupils at the time of their first school entrance, 
an excellent type of evidence for marriage 
license issuance can be provided by requiring 
candidates below 21 to present a document to 
the issuer which exempts them from further 
school attendance. As educational standards 
continue to be advanced and children are thus 
induced to remain in school longer, the mini- 
mum marriageable age should be advanced to 
agree with the age at which school attendance 
is no longer compulsory. Eventually school 

136 


PROOF OF AGE 


evidence on the subject of age, based as it 
should be upon primary documentary proofs, 
may become trustworthy enough to supersede 
entirely the types of evidence that have been 
enumerated in this chapter. These, however, 
would still be essential for candidates whose 
school records were in other countries. 

Adoption of the procedures here described 
would act as a check upon those parents who 
are willing to marry off their boys and girls 
while they are still children. But the impor- 
tant fact to consider is that such proof of age 
requirements would serve as the greatest pos- 
sible protection to all other parents. They 
never know now when some designing person 
or some impulse of the moment may spirit 
away the immature girl or boy from the home 
and make the child the victim of an adminis- 
trative system which is without proper safe- 
guards. 


137 


COAT TER AVi 
NERO bbe 


HILE we are in no sense opposed to 

\/ \/ those early marriages which are con- 
tracted after or, in some cases, before 
majority, and would welcome a movement to 
do away with many of the obstacles to such 
marriages, more especially among professional 
people, the time has now arrived to ask those 
of our readers who have followed our argu- 
ment thus far whether we have indeed suc- 
ceeded in making out a case against child mar- 
riage. If any are unable to accept all of our 
conclusions, perhaps they will at least accept 
our statement of facts and will build upon it. 
For further building is absolutely necessary. 
It is true that we have tried to indicate the 
legal and administrative changes which should 
make child marriages almost impossible. To 
suggest them, however, is not to achieve them. 
Many more people must become interested if 
the reforms here suggested are to win their 
way. There should be further discussion, 


there should be further study, and above all, 
138 


NEXT STEPS 


there should be concerted action. Such action 
as regards marriage will be more fruitful than 
as regards divorce, and every step taken and 
secured for marriage reform will tend to reduce 
the number of divorces. 

Following upon the present analysis, then, 
what next steps that would promote the 
abolition of child marriage are immediately 
possible? 


First, discussion. Associations of parents 
can become familiar with the known facts; so 
can the various women’s organizations. inter- 
ested in better public administration; so can 
the organizations of men and women who are 
shaping school policies. Educational associa- 
tions might well devote more attention than 
they have yet done to the relation of school 
attendance, school releases, and school! records 
of age to under-age marriage. Ministerial 
associations and the policy-shaping bodies of 
large religious denominations have a responsi- 
bility here which we believe they will accept 
with readiness, and in accepting will strengthen 
their own programs. Teachers in theological 
seminaries might bring this discussion into 
their classrooms and thresh it out there. Social 

139 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


workers, with whom the inquiry originated, 
should give it more intensive consideration in 
their state conferences and their national con- 
ference. They might invite interested minis- 
ters and license officials to join them, perhaps, 
in a frank canvassing of the difficulties in- 
volved. 


Second, study. Parallel with these discus- 
sions, and aided by them, more intensive study 
should go forward. ‘The present attempt 1s 
only a beginning. There will be needed a 
larger body of social facts bearing upon youth- 
ful marriage, and these should be gathered 
locality by locality. It is not sufficient to tell 
the citizens of Oregon what is happening in 
Alabama or the East. What they need are 
records of conditions in their own state. To 
assure their intelligent and active interest, 
moreover, social facts must be both accurate 
and up to date. 

A study of the marriage records of a given 
license office, for example, in order to discover 
the actual child marriage situation, should em- 
brace, for a given period of time, not only the 
recorded licenses that have been granted to 
children under 16, but should be extended to 

140 


NEXT STEPS 


youthful marriages in the locality up to and 
including brides whose ages are recorded as 20 
years, for there is always a chance of age falsi- 
fication. A further reason for including all 
licenses issued to candidates below their ma- 
jority is the fact that parental consent and the 
evidence of such consent which is now required 
should be covered by the study. What excep- 
tions are made that permit marriage under 
ager If pregnancy is one of these, what proof 
of pregnancy is required? What proof of age 
is demanded? What proof of residence? 
What proof of the fact of divorce? In what 
proportion of cases are the affidavits of candi- 
dates, of their parents, and of witnesses the 
only evidence demanded and produced? All 
of these matters should be covered in studying 
a local situation. 

On the biological side also there is need of 
more Intensive study. Every little while some- 
one comes forward with a tale of a girl who 
married at 14 or 15 and became the mother of 
10 children, one of whom is now a leading 
politician. Such instances of physical and 
social competency are interesting, but usually 
the tale leaves many pertinent facts unre- 
vealed. What we are eager to have authentic 

141 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


data about is whether the girls of 15 or less who 
are married today are as likely to survive in 
good health as are those who married later and 
whether their progeny are as likely to be 
physically well endowed and to survive. The 
evidence we have that can be regarded as 
scientific all points one way; namely, against 
such very early marriages. With ample aid 
from the scientific laboratories of the country, 
the various associations of stock breeders have 
now at hand important data which enable 
them to give specific warnings and instruc- 
tions to owners of horses, cows, and other live 
stock. Surely the subject of the physical well- 
being of human beings is more important. We 
confess that the human organism is more com- 
plex and that many more factors enter in, but, 
biologically speaking, there is nothing impos- 
sible about this suggested subject of inquiry 
and it is one full of significance for human 
welfare. 

Some of the social causes of child marriage 
have been briefly enumerated in these pages— 
inadequate home protection, unhappy home 
conditions, exploitation and fraud, the at- 
tempt to escape from compulsory school at- 
tendance or from state control, and, last but 

142 


NEXT STEPS 


not least, economic and occupational condi- 
tions.! But here again only a beginning has 
been made. There is need of intensive case 
study, revealing further social causes as well 
as the social results of child marriage upon the 
individual, the offspring, the family life. Once 
their attention has been centered upon the sub- 
ject, agencies engaged in social case work can 
begin to make these observations and to record 
them with care. At present, their data bearing 
upon youthful marriages are too fragmentary 
to be serviceable. 


Third and finally, concerted action. It is 
not necessary to delay action until the results 
of these suggested inquiries are all at hand. 
There are things upon which the evidence that 
we now have as a foundation for our next steps 
is conclusive enough for all practical purposes. 
To state these things categorically without 
attempting to review in detail data already 
presented, we would suggest the following 
lines of endeavor to be undertaken without 
further delay: 


1. Know the work of your license 1ssuer. With few 
exceptions, these officials are inclined to welcome greater 


1 See pages 65 to 68. 
143 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


public interest in the details of their task. If everyone 
opposed to child marriage would display an interest in 
what the issuers are doing, difficulties with which they 
are now contending single-handed would be brought to 
light, and they would be encouraged, moreover, to sub- 
stitute for merely routine procedures a measure of that 
discretion and due diligence which the laws of many 
states now empower them to exercise. 


2. Destroy the fee system. In so far as the system of 
fees in lieu of salaries to license issuers survives, it inter- 
feres with the disinterested character of their service, 
and should be reformed out of existence by much the 
same detailed attack that was necessary in the case of 
sheriff's fees. 


3. Strengthen the proofs of age. An examination of 
your state marriage law and its comparison with the 
possibilities of proving age described in the preceding 
chapter should indicate what proofs of age could now 
be required by administrators in the exercise of due 
diligence without waiting for new legislation. 


4. Substitute better evidence for affidavits. Or at least 
require evidence additional to the affidavit not only in 
the matter of the age of minors but in all other impor- 
tant qualifications of candidates, such as parental con- 
sent, legal residence, and divorce when divorce is 
alleged. No other form of evidence is quite so unsatis- 
factory in these connections as is the affidavit. 


5. Require both candidates to apply. Yo require both 
candidates to appear in person before the license issuer 
would save many court actions later. In states in 


144 


NEA -STEES 


which the marriage law is silent on the subject of who 
shall apply for the license and how, some license issuers 
have seen the advantage of requiring the personal ap- 
pearance of both candidates and have made it a part 
of their regular administrative procedure. 


6. Note that a reasonable minimum age should be an 
enforceable minimum. A majority of the foregoing sug- 
gestions are administrative, for most reforms in the 
marriage field must be so. It may be necessary, how- 
ever, to effect a change of law in some of the states 
before there can be much improvement in child marriage 
standards. The slow educational process by which the 
law is changed will help to make changes effective. 
Thus, a reasonable and enforceable minimum age of 16 
for girls and 18 for boys may require in a few states two 
or three steps taken at intervals in changing the law 
instead of just one change. In any case, minimum ages 
for license issuance should be specified in the marriage 
law of each state. At present they are definitely stipu- 
lated in the laws of only a small minority of the states. 


7. Co-ordinate the different laws of your state in which 
a minimum age 1s indicated. The minimum marriage- 
able age should not be lower than the minimum working 
age, and the compulsory school attendance age should 
be co-ordinated with both these others. No law, more- 
over, should allow a marriage license to be issued to a 
candidate so young that he or she can at once claim, by 
the provisions of a second law, the annulment of the 
marriage for non-age. Certain state laws now clash at 
one or more of these various points. 


10 145 


CHILD MARRIAGES 


8. Procure, in states that are without it, a law requiring 
advance notice of intention. Next to a minimum age 
law, the most important single legislative reform in con- 
nection with child marriage is the advance notice of 
intention to marry given to the license issuer some days 
(usually five) before the license can be issued. Such a 
law is now in operation, with certain exceptions allowed 
for, in eight states. It is a protection to children and to 
their parents. 


9. Put the marriage market town out of business. Is 
there a notorious Gretna Green in your state where out- 
of-town marriages are railroaded through either at the 
license office, the celebrant’s office, or both? If so, 
what legislative or other action would make its present 
operations unprofitable? Ro 


10. Discourage hasty marriages across the state border. 
Is there a marriage market town or Gretna Green in a 
state adjoining your own—near the state border, per- 
haps? If so, what concerted action could be taken by 
people in the two states to abolish or at least reduce this 
traffic? 


It is evident from the foregoing that the next 
steps in any effective campaign for child mar- 
riage reform are, in our estimation, those that 
must be taken state by state. We hold no 
brief for or against the general extension of 
federal power, but our studies have led us to 
the conclusion that, at the present time, fed- 
eral regulation of marriage would leave the 

146 


NESS STEPS 


practical working out of the situation where 
we now find it, and we find it in a state of 
chaos. In this as in so many other needed 
social reforms, it would seem that no single 
stage of development and advance can be 
omitted with safety. It is true that laws about 
marriage have been passed from time to time, 
but heretofore interest in their detailed ad- 
ministration has been of the slightest. Let us 
begin now and build solidly from the ground 
up for the welfare of children such as those 
whose misfortunes are here described. And 
there can be no better starting point than the 
local marriage license office in which, in the 
past, too many of these young people have 
received the authority of the state to do them- 
selves a tragic mischief. 


147 











INDEX 


Abduction, 65 


Adoption papers as evidence of 
age, 132 

Advance notice of intention to 
marry, 67, 146 

Affidavits: in marriage license 
offices, 94; other evidence 
than, 122-125; of parents not 
always conclusive proof, 125, 
128; local studies needed of 
present use of, 141; better 
evidence should be substituted 
for, 144 

Age: of puberty, 27; minimum, 
for marriage, 20, 28; of men 
who marry children, 58 (foot- 
note), 64; falsification, 63, 102; 
of 240 children married, 71. 
See also Proof of age 

Age classifications of census and 
of this book, 21 

Age falsification: and trial mar- 
riage, 114; in license offices, 
102-105, 120-124; mistaken 
methods of discovering, 127 

Age of consent a confusing term, 
54 

Alabama, 39, 40, 45 (footnote), 
66, 104, 105, 140 

Albany, 104, 108 (footnote) 

Altitude, effect of, upon ma- 
turity, 30 

Altus (Oklahoma), 104 

American Marriage Laws in their 
Social Aspects. Hall and 
Brooke, 10 

Annual Re port of the State Board of 
Health of Alabama for 1918, 40 


151 


Annulment of marriage, 53, 54, 


60, 62, 66, 71, 95, 96, 97, 98, 
99, I00, IOI, 113-116 


Appalachian chain, 34 


Appearance: of bride at license 
office, 125-127; of both candi- 
dates, 126, 144 


A pplication of Logic, The. Alfred 
Sidgwick, 29 

Arizona, 45 (footnote), 75 (foot- 
note), 109 

Arkansas, 45 (footnote) 

Arnold, Judge Victor V., 76 

Attendance officer quoted, 48 


Averages, forming a conclusion 
from, 29 


Baker, LaRaine Helen, 92 

Baldwin, Bird T., 26-28 

Baltimore, 133 

Baptismal certificates, 123, 131 

Baraboo (Wisconsin), 105 

Bastardy, 76 

Belleville (Illinois), 105 

Betrothal in childhood, 88-89 

Bible records as evidence of age, 
132 

Bigamy, 70, 97, 98, 101 

Biological aspects of child mar- 
riage, 15, 25, 141 

Biological studies of the mar- 
riageable age needed, 141-142 

Birmingham (Alabama), 104 

Birth certificates, 123, 131 


INDEX 


Birth records, varied uses of, 
128-130 

Boston, 79, 105, 133, 134; mar- 
riage law administration in, 
123,00 20 


Boys under 18 married, 64 


Cab driver as witness of mar- 
riage, 05 

California, 45 (footnote), 83, 95, 
98, 104, 105, 110, 120 _ 

Camden (New Jersey), 104 

Campbell, John C., 34 

Cannon, Dr. Walter B., 25-26 

Carr-Saunders, A. M., 14, 16 
(footnote), 24 

Census records as evidence of 
age, 132 

Certificates of circumcision as 
evidence of age, 132 

Charity organization societies. 
See Family welfare societies 

Charity Organization Society of 
New York City, 10 

Chauffeurs’ licenses and birth 
records, 129 

Chicago, 27, 735 76, 104, 123, 133 

Chicago Municipal Court, 72-73 

Chiefs of police, reports from, 60 

Child bearing, best ages for, 25 

Child labor: in New York City, 
18, 132; in some states, pro- 
hibited for earlier ages than is 
child marriage, 18; adminis- 
tration of, laws in to cities, 
133-135 

Child labor law of New York 
State, 130-131 

Child marriage: part of a larger 
question, 13-19; defined, 21; 
in India, 22; puberty and, 22; 


physiological aspects of, 24-20; 
climatic aspects of, 29-34; in 
cities and country districts, 31, 
38, 42; in Southern Highlands, 
34; among immigrant popu- 
lation, 35, 37-39, 73; racial 
aspects of, 35-40; social aspects 
of, 40-45; what the minimum 
age for, should be, 45-54; and 
immorality, 46; and age of 
husbands, 48; size of the prob- 
lem of, 55-58; features of the 
problem of, 58-74; and forced 
matriage, 81; without parental 
consent, 102-106; social causes 
of, 142; next steps in reform 
of, 143-146 

Child Welfare Commission of 
Missouri, 74 


Child welfare laws and marriage 
laws, 82-86 


Children’s agencies: records of, 
59; reports from, 60, 96, 99, 
100; case records of, as evi- 
dence of age, 132 


Chronological ratings versus phy- 
siological and mental ratings, 
ime a 

Church workers, 72, 96 

Cincinnati, 81 


City superintendents of schools, 
82 


City versus country, child mar- 
riage in, 31, 38, 42 

Civil service and birth records, 
129 

Clayton (Missouri), 104 

Clergymen, 12, 46, 47, 59, 60, 96, 
139, 140 

Clerks of court, reports from, 60, 
95, 96; 97, 99 

Cleveland, 133, 134 

Climate and race, 35 


152 


INDEX 


Climatic aspects of youthful mar- 
riage, 29-34 

Climatic zones of United States, 
youthful marriage in, 31 

Colorado, 20 (footnote), 85 

Columbus (Ohio), 133 


Commercial employment and 
birth records, 130 
Commercial exploitation and 


child marriage, 70 


Commissioners on Uniform State 
Laws, 12 (footnote), 18 


Commitment records to chil- 
dren’s institutions as evidence 
of age, 132 

Common law: minimum ages for 
matriage, 20, 28; frees from 
parental control a minor who 
marries, 85 

Communication: difficulty of, 
33-34; multiplied means of, 
41, 45 

Compulsory education law, 17; 
in New York State, 18 


Comradeship in marriage, 49 

Concerted action needed, 143-146 

Confirmation certificates as evi- 
dence of age, 132 


Conflict of marriage laws with 
child welfare laws, 82-86 


Connecticut, 45 (footnote), 75 
(footnote), 98 


Contrast between marriage ages 
of foreign-born girls and foreign 
girls of the second generation, 
36-39 

Co-ordination of marriage laws 
with other child welfare laws, 
82-86, 145 

County solicitor, report from, 97 


Court consent to marriage of girls 
under certain ages, 109-113 


Court, or department, of review 
in certain marriage cases, 92 


Court records as evidence of age, 
132 

Criminal assault, 70, 97 

Crown Point (Indiana), 104 

Customs and habits, 16, 18, 41 


Davenport (Iowa), 104 
Delaware, 45 (footnote), 67 
(footnote), 75 (footnote), 79 
Departmental versus court pro- 
cedure in marriage cases, 113 

Detectives, 72 

Detroit, 85 

Dickens, Charles, 62 

Discussion, need of, 139 

District attorney, report from, 97 

District of Columbia, 45 (foot- 
note), 133 

Divorce, 9, 71, 77, Tol, I14, 130, 
T4I, 144 

Documentary evidence of age, 
117, 123, 129-131 

Duluth (Minnesota), 104 


Early marriages as distinguished 
from late, 21 (footnote), 138 


Educational associations, 139 


Employment certificates and 
birth records, 130-136 


Enid (Oklahoma), 104 

Environment, heredity, and so- 
cial tradition, 15 

Evasion: of institutional care, 
case of, 68; of school atten- 
dance, cases of, 83, 84, 96; of 
punishment for delinquency, 
cases of, 85, 100 


153 


INDEX 


Evergreen (Alabama), 104 

Exceptions: clauses and the min- 
imum marriageable age, 52; in 
pregnancy cases, 74-82; cases 
in Boston, 78; reasons for re- 
fusing court orders in, cases, 79 


Family welfare societies, 10, 60; 
records of, 59; reports from, 97, 
98, 99; case records as evi- 
dence of age, 132 : 


Federal amendment on child 
labor, 135 


Federal regulation of marriage, 
140-147 

Feeble-mindedness, 69, 99 

Fee system, 144 


Field studies in marriage law 
administration, 11 

First communion and child labor, 
17 

Florida, 20 (footnote) 

Foreign-born girls and youthful 
matriage, 36-39 

Foreign school records as evi- 
dence of age for working 
papers, 132 

Forfeit for issuance of license 
without parental consent, 124 


Forged letters of parental con- 
sent, 107 


Fort Payne (Alabama), 104 
Frye, Taylor, 135 (footnote) 


Geographical aspects of child 
matriage, 29-34 

Georgia, 45 (footnote), 67 (foot- 
note) 


Grand Rapids, 38 


Grant, Anne MacVicar, 108 

Gretna Greens, 12, 51, 62, 79, 
105, TAG G0 

Grounds for annulment of mar- 
riage, 113-114 


Hall and Brooke, ro 

Hasty marriages, 65, 66 

History of Human Marriage, The. 
Edward Westermarck, 15, 16, 
22s eos 

History of Matrimonial Institu- 
tions. George Elliott Howard, 
12 (footnote), 90 

Hobhouse, L. T., 14 

Hospital and clinic records as 
evidence of age, 132 

Hot climate, effect of, upon ma- 
turity, 30 

Howard, George Elliott, 12 (foot- 
note), go 

Hugo (Oklahoma), 104 

Huntington, Ellsworth, 35 

Husbands of child wives, 58, 64, 
64 (footnote) 


Idaho, 20 (footnote) 

Illegitimacy, 76 

Illinois, 45 (footnote), 76, 104, 
TOS (100,21 20,4120 

Illustrative cases of child mar- 
riage, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 
73; 83 

Illustrative cases: of parental 
consent, 94-101; of court au- 
thority sustained, 111; of non- 
appearance of bride at license 
office, 126 

Immigrants and child marriages, 
Doradoe 


154 


INDEX 


Immigration records as evidence 
of age, 132 

Impersonation of parents at 
license offices, 107 


Increase in number of marriages 
in United States, 44 


Indiana, 45 (footnote), 75 (foot- 
note), 104 

Indianapolis, 133, 134 

Individual variations among nor- 
mal children, 27 


Industrial depressions and the 
marriage rate, 43, 44 


Infant Mortality. Anna Ro- 
chester, 25 
Institutional attitude toward 


marriage, 38 
Insurance policies as evidence of 
age, 132 
Intermarriage among cousins, 45 
INTRODUCTION, 9-19 
Iowa, 45 (footnote), 104 
Iowa City, 27 


Isolation: geographical, 32-34, 
41; of a fixed idea, 42 


Jsothermal divisions of the United 
States, 31 


Issuance of working papers, 85 
Italy, youthful marriages in, 32- 


| 
Ithaca (New York), 104 


Jeffersonville (Indiana), 104 

Journal of Social Hygiene, 60 

Judges: opinions of, on mini- 
mum marriageable age, 50; 
reports from, 46, 60, 95, 98 


Juvenile Court of Chicago, 76 


Juvenile court: records, 77; cases 
from, 96, 97; Consent to mar- 
riage of wards of, 110-113 


“Juvenile Marriage” in Proceed- 
ings of New York State Con- 
ference of Charities and Cor- 
rection. Arthur W. Towne, 60 


Kansas, 45 (footnote), 75 (foot- 
note), 109 (footnote) 

Kentucky, 20 (footnote), 34, 40, 
69 

Kinds of proof of age available, 
T25*t37 

Kinds of proof of age now re- 
quired for marriage, 120-128 


Klima und Mannbarkeit. Stein- 
ach and Kammerer, 30 


Law alone is ineffectual, 17 

Leagues of women voters, 13, 139 

Legal minimum age, 20, 54. See 
also Minimum marriageable 
ages 

License issuers, 60, 62, 75, 953 
opinions of, on minimum mar- 
riageable age, 50; marriages 
prevented by, 72; opinions of, 
on proof of age, 120-124; pay 
forfeit in North Carolina for 
ignoring parental consent re- 
quirement, 124; who require 
both candidates to apply, 126, 
145; deserve our interest and 
co-operation, 143, 144 

License offices, 12, 19; illegal prac- 
tices in some, 80; and their rec- 
ords of girl candidates of 18 
and 1g years of age, 104-105 


Local surveys needed, 11, 140 
Los Angeles, 104 
Louisiana, 20 (footnote) 


Maine, 20 (footnote), 67 (foot- 
note) 


155 


INDEX 


Marital maladjustments, 10 

MARRIAGEABLE AGE, THE, 20- 
54 

Marriage, Divorce, Separation, 
and Domestic Relations. James 
Schouler, 114 

Marriage law administration, 
study of, in process, 10-12 

Marriage licenses illegally issued, 
72 

Marriage market towns, 12, 51, 
62, 79, 195, 146 

MARRIED CHILDREN, 55-86 

Maryland, 20 (footnote), 27 

Mason (Michigan), 104 

Massachusetts, 45 (footnote), 64 
(footnote), 67 (footnote), 75 
(footnote), 77, 90, 104, I05, 
109 (footnote), 126 

Massachusetts Bay Colony’s 
child protective law, 90 

Massachusetts Historical Society 
Collections, Third Series, 90 

Memoirs of an American Lady. 
Anne MacVicar Grant, 108 

Michigan, 45 (footnote), 75 
(footnote), 76, 77, 80, 81, 104, 
109 (footnote) 

Milwaukee, 104 

Minimum marriageable ages, 20, 
28; what the, should be, 45- 
54; by states, 45; opinions on 
the, 50-52; and exception 
clauses, 52; present laws on, 
53; limitations of term, as 
here used, 54; and school ages, 
136; should be enforceable, 
145 

Ministerial associations, 139 

Minneapolis, 85 

Minnesota, 45 (footnote), 104 

Minor, Jeanie V., 131, 132 


Mississippi, 20 (footnote) 
Missouri, 45 (footnote), 74, 75 
(footnote), 104, 109 (footnote) 
Monroe (Michigan), 104 
Montana, 45 (footnote) 
Montgomery (Alabama), 105 
Mothers: children of young, 24; 
best ages for child bearing, 25 
Municipal Court of Chicago, 
Tenth and Eleventh Annual 
Report, 73 


Murphysboro (Illinois), 104 


National League of Compulsory 
Education Officials, 84 

Native girls and youthful mar- 
riage, 36-39 

Naturalization papers as evi- 
dence of age, 132 

Nebraska, 45 (footnote), 67 
(footnote) 

Negroes, youthful marriages 
among, 39-40, 74 (footnote) 

Nevada, 45 (footnote) 

New Bedford (Massachusetts), 
104 

New Hampshire, 45, 67 (foot- 
note), 75 (footnote), 109 

New Jersey, 20 (footnote), 54, 67 
(footnote), go, 104 

New Mexico, 45 (footnote) 

Newspaper items as clues, 60 

New York Child Labor Com- 
mittee, 131 

New York City, 10,:13,727,-36,; 
38, 99, 105, 128, 130, 131, 133 

New York State, 20 (footnote), 
100, 104, 105, 106, II0, IIT} 
experience with proof of age 
in the child labor field, 130-132 


156 


INDEX 


NEXT STEPS, 138-147 


Non-appearance of candidates at 
license office, 125-126 

North Carolina, 39, 45 (foot- 
note); provision in marriage 
law of a forfeit for issuance 
without parental consent, 124 

North Dakota, 45 (footnote) 


Notifying other license offices, 
121 


Ogburn, W. F., 16 (footnote), 
18, 30 (footnote) 


Ohio, 45 (footnote), 75 (foot- 
note), 77, 81, 109, 112 


Oklahoma, 40, 45 (footnote), 75 
(footnote), 104, 105, 109 (foot- 
note) 

Oklahoma City, 105 

Oregon, 45 (footnote), 140 

Oshkosh (Wisconsin), 105 


Our Social Heritage. Graham 
Wallas, 16 (footnote) 


PARENTAL CONSENT, 87-116 


Parental consent, 15, 20, O61, 
144; illegally waived for preg- 
nancy cases, 80; elimination 
of, 91; and child marriages, 
93-102; laws requiring, 106; 
forged letters of, 107; sub- 
stitutes for, 109-113; annul- 
ment of marriage for lack of, 
115; local studies of, situation 
needed, 141 


Parental control of marriage in 
the past, 87-91 

Parental forgiveness, 107-108 

Parental neglect, 68 

Parents, 20, 62, 63, 72, 85, 87, 89, 
QI, 92, IOI, 106, 107, 128, 136, 
137, 146 


Parents’ associations, 139 
Parsons, Elsie Clews, 91 
Passports and birth records, 129 
Passports as evidence of age, 131 
Pennsylvania, 20 (footnote), 42 
“Pennsylvania Dutch,” the, 42 
Peoria (Illinois), 105 
Personal appearance of parents 
at marriage license office, 106 
Philadelphia, 85, 133, 134 
Physical examinations in the 
absence of evidence of age for 
working papers, 131 
Physical Growth, The, of Children 


from Birth to Maturity. Bird 
T. Baldwin, 26-28 

Physiological aspects of child 
marriage, 15, 24-29, 141 

Pittsburgh, 133, 134 

Population Problem, The. A.M. 
Carr-Saunders, 16 (footnote), 
24 

Pregnancy, 74-82, 95, 98, I00, 
141; proof of, 80; court con- 
sent substituted for parental 
consent in cases of, 112 

Primary evidence of age, 131 

Probation officers, 60, 77, 78, 95, 
97 

Professional people, earlier mar- 
riage among, advocated, 138 

PROOF OF AGE, 117-137 

Proof of age, 67, 73, 108, 115, 
I4I, 144 

Proof of residence, 141 

Prostitution, 70 

Protection to parents, proof of 
age aS a, 137 

Puberty, 22; marriage before, 
24; and child-bearing, 25; 
age of, 27; marriage at, 46 


157 


INDEX 


Race and climate, 35 


Race Improvement. 
Helen Baker, 92 


Racial aspects, 35-40 

Rape, 76, 97 

Ratio of 18- to 19-year-old girls 
who marry, 104-105 

Reasonable inquiry by the 
license issuer, 124 

Recessive character of parental 
control, go 

Records, sixteen types of, as 
secondary evidence of age, 132 

Relatives, 88, 125 

Religious celebrants. See Clergy- 
men 

Residence, proof of legal, 144 

Responsibility of the state for 
marriage, go 

Rhinelander (Wisconsin), 105 

Rhode Island, 20 (footnote), 106 

Right of appeal from parental 
control, 93 

Rochester, Anna, 25 

Rochester (New York), 103; 
jurisdiction over marriage of 
wards of court in, I10-112; 
evidence of age in, for working 
papers, 133, 134 

Rock Island (Illinois), 104 

Romantic ideas of youthful mar- 
riage, 61, 85 

Rural districts, youthful mar- 
riage in, 31, 38, 42 


LaRaine 


Sacramento (California), 104 

St. Joseph (Michigan), 104 

San Diego (California), 104, 110 
San Francisco, 105 

San Rafael (California), 104 


Santa Ana (California), 105 

Schoharie (New York), 103, 104 

School admissions and birth re- 
cords, 129 

School officials: reports from, 60, 
97; interest of, in child mar- 
riage, 82-85, 139 

School records as evidence of age 
for working papers, 134, 136 

Secondary evidence of age, 131; 
16 forms of, 132 

Second generation foreign girls 
and youthful marriage, 36-39 


Settlement clubs and classes, 
records of, as evidence of age, 
132 

Sheriffs, reports from, 60 

Sidgwick, Alfred, 29 

Social aspects of child marriage, 
40-45, 142 

Social case records, data in, on 
child marriage, 143 

Social Change. W. F. Ogburn, 
16 (footnote) 

Social Freedom. 
Parsons, 91 

Social habits, 16 

Social heritage, 14-19, 23 

Social recognition and marriage 
of second generation foreign 
girls, 39 

Social tradition, 14-19, 23, 42 

Social workers, 77, 79, III, 1333 
opinions of, on minimum mar- 
riageable age, 50; and the dis- 
cussion of child marriage, 140 

South Carolina, 39, 45 (footnote) 

South Dakota, 45 (footnote) 

Southern Highlander, The, and His 
Homeland. John C. Campbell, 
34 


Elsie Clews 


158 


INDEX 


Southern Highlands, youthful 
matriages in the, 32-34, 41 


State Board of Health of Ala- 
bama, Annual Report of, for 
1918, 40 

State by state marriage reform 
the next step, 135, 146, 147 

State’s share in our education, 14 

State Superintendent of Public 
Instruction in California, 83 

Steinach and Kammerer, 30 

Stock breeders have access to 
biological data, 142 
Study of child marriages: more 

' intensive, needed, 140; ground 
to becovered by local, 140, 
141 

Substitutes for parental consent, 
109-113 

Substitution, 16-18 


Sunday school records as evi- 
dence of age, 132 


Superior (Wisconsin), 105 


Telegraph, parental consent by, 
106 


Telephone, parental consent by, 
106 


Temporary character of child 
marriages, 70 

Tennessee, 20 (footnote) 

Texas, 45 (footnote), 97, 105 

Theological seminaries, 139 

Towne, Arthur W., 60, 64 

Trial marriage, 114 

Tulsa (Oklahoma), 104 


Unhappiness in the home, 67 

United States Children’s Bureau, 
24 

Utah, 45 (footnote) 


Vaccination certificates as evi- 
dence of age, 132 


Vancouver (Washington), 104 

Variation as between the sexes, 
27-28 

Verbal consent of parents, 106 

Vermont, 45 (footnote) 

Vincennes (Indiana), 104 

Virginia, 20 (footnote) 

Voidable marriages, 114 


Wage demand, relation of, to 
youthful marriages, 37-39 


Wallas, Graham, 15, 16 (footnote) 


War: and the marriage rate, 43; 
and pregnancy exceptions, 78 


Wards of court, 110-113 
Washington (D. C.), 133 


Washington, State of, 45 (foot- 
note), 104 


Waukegan (Illinois), 104 

Westermarck, Edward, 15, 16, 
22, 24, 88 

West Virginia, 45 (footnote) 

Wichita Falls (Texas), 105 


Wisconsin, 45 (footnote), 67 
(footnote), 104, 105, 135 


Witnesses, 141 

Working papers and evidence of 
age, 130-136 

World Power and Evolution. Ells- 
worth Huntington, 35 

Written consent of parents, 106 

Wyoming, 45 (footnote), 97 


“Voung Girl Marriages in Crimi- 
nal and Juvenile Courts.” Ar- 
thur W. Towne, 60 

Youthful marriages by sections 
of the country and by stock, 36 


Youthful marriages defined, 21 


159 


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